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Comment by chrisseaton | Hacker News Reader

Something important to note when reading this is that at a university in the US, almost everyone is a professor. That's why these pay ranges are so wide - they include both very junior part-time staff and very senior world-class full-time staff.

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Not entirely true - a growing number of PhD-holding faculty have labels like "lecturer" or "instructor", which are non-tenure-track and often contract based. Like in the public college system, this is leading to the majority of student contact hours being from faculty who don't have any permanent status within the university, and whose pay is far below even the junior professors.

These contact hours are further diluted with TA's shouldering a lot of the burden too.

My sister was a doctor at a hospital affiliated with a local public state university (similar to the ones in the dataset) and was listed as a professor on publicly available salary databases because she would train interns and residents for them. She definitely wasn't a professor in the traditional research sense but she was teaching in a way.

In the US, professors come in different grades: full professors, assistant professors, associate professors, etc. (https://maniagnosis.crsr.net/2016/02/a-short-guide-to-academ...)

That couldn't be less true. I'm not even sure what point you're trying to make. Obviously not "everyone" is a professor when you mix in facilities and administrative staff.

If you're trying to more narrowly say "all instructors are considered professors", that's not true at any institution type, not even R1 (major research Universities)

https://www.aaup.org/sites/default/files/10112018%20Data%20S...

My understanding that almost all academics with tenure and even many without in the US calls themselves a ‘professor.’

I'm not sure what you're trying to say with that PDF - it doesn't even mention the word!

How often do “very junior part-time staff” have tenure?

They normally wouldn't.

Their title would be something like lecturer. I suppose students might call them professor, or they might insist on being called professor just like some Ph.D graduates might insist on being called 'Doctor' even though they're not a medical doctor.

An associate professor would at least be tenure-track.

> Their title would be something like lecturer.

Have you never heard of 'adjunct professors' in the US?

> An associate professor

In most countries people at the level of just associate professor don't call themselves 'professor.'

> like some Ph.D graduates might insist on being called 'Doctor' even though they're not a medical doctor

The title 'doctor' means you have a doctorate, or in some cases like the UK it's also used as a courtesy title for a medical professional with just a bachelors degree. PhDs, EngDs, DPhils, DLs, MDs, and more are all entitled to use it as much as each other.

Could you elaborate a bit? I know that over here there are certain requirements (needs to teach classes, publish at least one paper a year).

Is this different in the US?

In many countries a professor is usually extremely distinguished in their field, with perhaps twenty years' research experience, and you will only get a couple of them in each department, with some universities not having any.

I think in the US everyone just automatically gets the title 'professor.'

The same ranks exist in the US:

1. Assistant Professor

2. Associate Professor

3. [Full] Professor

As far as I know, you should only use the title "Prof." to refer to a "full" professor, and "Dr." for assistant and associate professors. In reality, everyone is just referred to as a "professor".

Exactly. Except I thought you should use "Prof" for anybody with Professor in their title.

My University also has a few other titles: Acting Prof, Research Prof, and of course Prof Emeritus

I believe in (some) American universities, any non-grad student who teaches a class is called a professor.

In the summer I had a grad student who was teaching the class as the primary teacher, and he was called "professor" (although I suspect his paycheck was just the standard grad check).

Basically, if you teach even a single class (you have alternative employment, teach at a few different schools, are underemployed, etc.) you are an adjunct professor. And there are a lot of adjuncts.

You generally start as an assistant professor, which means you are on the tenure track but you don't yet have tenure. After several years, if you did well, you get promoted to associate professor, meaning that you got tenure. Finally, after some more years, you turn into a full professor, at which point you will likely earn the most.

All three types are generally referred to as "professor" but they differ in their seniority.

Promotion from associate professor to professor is not automatic; indeed, there are several associate professors in my department who have been at that rank for some time, and seem unlikely to get promoted.

But it is reasonably common, unlike in (say) the UK.

There are multiple 'professor' titles, but only one tenured faculty role. The tenured faculty is the holy grail, and everyone else is underpaid and overworked. [0]

You have instructor, assistant professor, associate professor, and professor. There's also such things as visiting professor (temporary postition) or professor emeritus (used to be a professor).

[0]. https://www.bu.edu/handbook/appointments-and-promotions/clas...

Could you clarify what 'one tenured faculty role' means?

The link you gave says "The granting of Tenure, discussed in “Tenure and Promotion on the Charles River Campus”, is a separate guarantee that is not implied by any of the titles discussed in this section."

The tenure document, for example, says that 'The award of tenure to an Assistant Professor shall include promotion to the rank of Associate Professor.' So 'tenured associate professor' is a tenured faculty role, in addition to the 'tenured professor' faculty, such as http://www.bu.edu/wheelock/dr-leslie-dietiker-promoted-to-as... .

I think GP is using "role" to mean the collection of tasks/functions performed by a person rather than their job title. As far as I can tell, duties and incentives don't change as much when going from associate to full professor as when going from assistant to associate.

Thanks. I think I'm getting stuck on "The tenured faculty" rather than simply "tenure".

Almost everyone except the adjuncts, which might be a small number at some R1 institutions, but might be a lot more common elsewhere.

Their title is literally "adjunct professor". They would show up in this graph as "professor".

Maybe. In some places, it's "lecturer" or "instructor". In addition, I looked up one individual I know is an adjunct, and his title was just "adjunct" on the department page. I suppose it's possible there's a more official database wherein his title is adjunct professor.

Perhaps there's a difference in terminology? My sense is that in academic circles, adjunct is now frequently used not for a specific position/title, but for the class of professionals who are hired on a semester by semester basis and paid by the class. Whereas the assistant/associate/full professor ladder is well defined most places, the adjunct position is more of an afterthought. It's temporary/disposable labor.

Adjunct is a way of designating an affiliation that is not on the tenure track, i.e. is not regular faculty (and will not be).

In my experience it's a professional affiliation that is flexible, designating that you are not a student, but not regular faculty. In some cases it designates a sessional lecturer (i.e. paid by the course, not full time, no job security), but it can also be used to associate someone in the department for the purposes of contributing to research or co-supervising a student. So you can end up being an adjunct for a department for a while without ever having been employed by them directly.

Originally it was much more the latter use, and not the former, but as the use of non-TT instructors grew some places used adjunct for this, others "lecturer", "sessional" etc.

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