Comparing the Vernaculars of American and British Universities (II)

But in American English the collective term for university teachers is “faculty,” which in British English means a division of a university that houses cognate subject areas, such as “Faculty of Arts,” “Faculty of Science,” etc. “Professors” and “faculty” are interchangeable terms in American English. That’s why the American equivalent of the Nigerian Academic Staff […]

But in American English the collective term for university teachers is “faculty,” which in British English means a division of a university that houses cognate subject areas, such as “Faculty of Arts,” “Faculty of Science,” etc. “Professors” and “faculty” are interchangeable terms in American English. That’s why the American equivalent of the Nigerian Academic Staff Union of Universities is called the Association of American University Professors, which is open to all people who teach in the university—be they lecturers, adjuncts, visiting professors, tenure-track or tenured professors.

In the American system, the term “staff” is used only for people who don’t teach or research in the university, what we call “non-academic staff” in the British system. So where the British would say “academic and non-academic staff” Americans would say “faculty and staff.”

Lastly, the American academe has some professional titles that, to my knowledge, are absent in the British system. For instance, there is in the American system what is called “professor of the practice,” which refers to people who are awarded a professorial title because of their extensive immersion in and knowledge of a field, although they may not have more than a bachelor’s degree. The practice is intended to draw people with industry experience to the academe and to bridge the gap between the “town” and the “gown.” This is especially common in such vocational and skill-based courses as journalism, engineering, business, etc.

This is unnecessary in the (old) British system because people can attain the highest rank in their academic careers with just a bachelor’s degree. Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, JP Clark, etc became professors (or, if you will, “full professors”) without having Ph.D.s. The National Universities Commission has, however, now made it impossible for anybody without a Ph.D. to proceed beyond the rank of “Senior Lecturer.”

Americans also have what they call “research professors” who are hired only to conduct research; they don’t teach any courses.

Then there is a whole world of difference in the vocabulary for everyday university activities. For instance, what we call “question papers” in British English are better known as “tests” in American English. When I first came here, I had occasion to instruct my students to not write on their “question papers” because I wanted to use the same papers for another class. The students all looked blankly at me.

I initially thought they had problems with my Nigerian accent. So I not only enunciated it clearly and slowly, I also wrote it on the board. But they still said, “What’s that?” And when I pointed to their “question papers,” they exclaimed, “Oh, you mean we should not write on the test?” Write on the test? Test is an abstract noun. How the hell do you literally write on an idea? Anyway, I have since stopped calling question papers by their name; they are “tests.”

Again, American professors don’t “mark scripts”; they “grade papers.” And they don’t award or reduce students’ “marks”; they give or “take off” students’ “grades” or “points.” And there is this whole concept of “curve” or “curving” in the American academe that I don’t think has an equivalent in the Nigerian British-derived system.

Sometime in the early part of my stay here, about half of my students got really low scores in my first test. On the day I handed out their test grades, one female student stood up and asked if I would give her a “curve.”

I wondered silently what in Heaven’s name she meant by a “curve.” But I knew that the girl knew enough to know that only God could bring curves to her skinny, almost masculine, physique at that stage of her life. So she couldn’t possibly mean that she wanted me to do something about her lack of bodily endowments. Besides, there were also men in the class who should have no business with “curves” but who wanted a “curve” from me. So I asked, “What curve”?

Seeing my confusion—and its obvious implication, because I must have been unconsciously examining the lady’s body to observe the absence of curves on her!—somebody volunteered to change the structure of the sentence to, “Will you curve the grades?” It was then I got a hint that they were probably asking if I would add extra “points” across the board to move the class average up.

I couldn’t relate to it because it was a strange concept for me. In Nigeria, my teachers never gave me grades that I didn’t work for. Second, I just couldn’t associate the word “curve” with the arbitrary increase in the grades of students to raise the class average—perhaps because of my weak quantitative reasoning abilities. I don’t draw graphs; I only draw word pictures. A recent article I read from a retired, frustrated British academic called this “scaling.” So the Brits now have the American equivalent of “curving.” I am not sure this practice– and the corresponding terminology– has percolated to Nigeria yet.

Again, “certificate” is not a generic word for paper qualifications, as it is in British English; when the word is used in an educational context in America, it usually implies a document certifying the completion of a short, crash course. “Diploma” is the generic word for all manner of certificates—bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees, etc; it does not mean a sub-degree qualification, as it does in British English. And “college” is the generic word for university, although it technically means an institution that only awards four-year bachelor’s degrees. When somebody is described as “college-educated,” it often means he or she has at least a bachelor’s degree. “College professor” is also the generic term for what in British English we would call “university lecturer.”

And then you have this fascinating semantic and lexical inversion of the names for the lengthy research papers students write at the end of their degree programs. In British English, people write “dissertations” at the end of their bachelor’s and master’s degree programs and “thesis” at the end of their Ph.D. study. In America, people write “honor’s thesis” at the end of their bachelor’s degree programs, a “thesis” at the end of their master’s programs, and a “dissertation” at the end of their Ph.D. programs.

Another expression in the American academic community that intrigues me greatly is “commencement exercise.” When I was first invited to a “commencement” at the end of my first semester at an American university I wondered what the hell anybody would be commencing at the end of a semester. I thought “commencement” was the American equivalent of the British “matriculation,” and couldn’t understand why students would be matriculating at the end of a semester.

I later learned that “commencement” is actually the American equivalent of the British “convocation” while “orientation” is the American equivalent of the British “matriculation.” My friends told me that the logic behind the word commencement is that it is when people graduate that they really “commence” the journey to the “real world.” I later found out, though, that some American universities use “convocation” in the same way that it is used in British English.

Whatever the case, the vernaculars of the academe in the British and American systems present fascinating examples of the vitality and diversity of the English language.