Comparing the Vernaculars of American and British Universities (I)

For instance, when someone addresses herself as a “professor of geography” at a university, what should we understand her as saying? Should we understand her as saying that she has reached the highest possible point attainable in the hierarchy of university teaching and research? Or is she an entry-level assistant professor, “lecturer,” or even a […]

For instance, when someone addresses herself as a “professor of geography” at a university, what should we understand her as saying? Should we understand her as saying that she has reached the highest possible point attainable in the hierarchy of university teaching and research? Or is she an entry-level assistant professor, “lecturer,” or even a graduate teaching assistant who just wants to say that she teaches geography at a university?
The first sense is chiefly British while the second is decidedly American. But, increasingly, the American usage is being adopted in British universities. In what follows, I have identified the vernaculars of the academe in the two dominant dialects of the English language while laying bare the ways in which these vernaculars sometimes interweave in fascinating ways.
In American English, “professor” is a generic term for anybody who teaches in a university (Brits prefer the preposition “at” in reference to universities and other kinds of schools) and the term “professoriate” refers to the university teaching profession collectively. In British English, of course, “professor” is a title used only by and for people who have reached the pinnacle of university teaching and research, what Americans call “full professor.”
But the American usage of “professor” is more faithful to the Latin etymology of the term which, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, literally means a “person who professes to be an expert in some art or science….” In the Romance languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Italian, etc), which are the surviving linguistic children of Latin, professor is used to denote teacher at any level of education.
The generic term for a university teacher in the British system is “lecturer.” But in the American system, lecturer means something slightly different. There are two dominant senses of the term in America. The first is a public speaker at certain universities. The second sense is an inferior-rank university teacher who either does not possess a Ph.D. or who has a Ph.D. but doesn’t have a tenure-track job. (I will explain what “tenure-track” means shortly).
Lecturers are despised and looked down upon with contempt in the American academe. They are overworked and underpaid, only teach undergraduates, are not expected to be researchers, and are often abandoned to vegetate on the fringes of academic departments in American universities.
In the American system, fresh Ph.D.s start their careers as Assistant Professors. These positions may be tenure-track or non-tenure-track. A tenure-track appointment is basically an appointment that promises life-employment to an aspiring academic, usually within six to seven years from the start of employment. In research-intensive schools, the conditions for tenure is at least a peer-reviewed book published by a reputable academic publishing house, a couple of referred academic journal articles in reputable journals, some evidence of teaching excellence, and service to the university.
In teaching-heavy schools where the focus is on undergraduate education, to earn tenure you have show evidence of teaching excellence, have a couple of peer-reviewed journal articles, some academic conference presentations, and service to the university. When an assistant professor meets the requirements for tenure, she will be promoted to the rank of associate professor, and then finally to “full professor.”
Academic positions in the less prestigious non-tenure-track option are “lecturer,” “visiting professor,” and “adjunct professor.” An adjunct professor is a type of university teacher we would call a “part-time lecturer” in the British system. Some people are “adjuncts” by choice, perhaps because they have full-time jobs elsewhere; many, however, take the position because they can’t find tenure-track jobs.
Lecturers, on the other hand, are employed usually on a two-year contract that is subject to periodic review and renewal. The condition for the renewal of the contract is evidence of teaching effectiveness. There is no expectation of research productivity. The highest position rank you can attain in the lecturer track is “senior lecturer,” which is completely different from the British understanding of the term, as I will show shortly. In other words, lecturers never get to be “full professors.”
In the American system, lecturers are paid less, teach more courses, and have far less privileges and benefits than tenure-track or tenured professors. They have no guarantee of life-time employment; they can be fired from their jobs at any time for any reason. In most departments, they are excluded from departmental meetings. They are similar in some respects to “visiting” professors (i.e., visiting assistant professor, visiting associate professor and visiting professor), except that a visiting professorship is usually a terminal, non-renewable appointment that lasts no more than two years.
Lecturers, adjuncts, and visiting professors are the intellectual slave laborers of the American academe. Don’t call an American academic a “lecturer” if you’re not sure that’s really their designation. Use the more generic “professor” if unsure.
Now, it’s really difficult to match the academic titles across the American and British systems. But it is customary to state that “senior lecturer” in the British system is equivalent to “assistant professor” in the American system, “reader” (which is rarely used these days) in the British system is the equivalent of the American “associate professor,” and “professor” in the British system is the equivalent of “full professor” in the American system.
In reality, however, this is a false equivalence, as I will soon show. But it’s interesting that most people who attain the rank of “reader” in the British system prefer to be addressed as “associate professor”; however, “senior lecturers” in the British system don’t call themselves “assistant professors.” My sense is that the term “associate professor” is popular in non-American contexts because it indicates that the person associated with the title is only a step away from being a professor in the British sense of the term, while the term “assistant professor” may give the impression that the bearer of the title is merely an assistant to a professor, which he is not.
In the British system, fresh Ph.D.s with no publication (especially in the humanities and the social sciences) begin their careers as Lecturer II, move up to Lecturer I, to Senior Lecturer, Reader, and finally to Professor. (People with a master’s degree start their university teaching careers as “assistant lecturers” and those with a bachelor’s degree start as “graduate assistants.”)
That’s a far longer route than the American system. But, then, the American system is way more rigorous than the British system. The American system is structured in such a way that many Ph.D. candidates leave their programs with substantial conference paper and publication record–often enough to earn the position of “Senior Lecturer” in the British system. Plus, the publish-or-perish (some say it’s actually publish-and-perish) environment of the American academia makes American academics way more productive than their counterparts in the British system.