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Comment by chrisseaton | Hacker News Reader

Don't you need about 20 years of top tier papers to get to the rank of professor?

Different countries and different schools define "professor" differently. The lowest rank in the US is often called "adjunct professor", which is a part-time position with no research requirements. Adjunct professors often only have masters degrees, as well.

I don't think there's one single definition of "professor" that is true around the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_ranks

Adjunct is grafted onto the side of the regular academic ladder, which goes assistant —> associate -> full professor, and then perhaps a named chair or professsorship (e.g. Lucasian Professor of Mathematics)

The idea behind adjuncts was originally that you might hire someone on a temporary basis, either because of an unexpectedly large class or to offer a class on a special topic: a famous politician might offer a seminar about their time in office or an industrial researcher might offer something related to their work.

However, it’s become increasingly common to hire adjuncts to teach intro classes because they’re cheaper than professors (usually a flat fee per class and minimal benefits) and don’t involve much commitment (usually hired per semester), both of which have obvious short-term benefits to the administration.

It's worth noting that some departments at some universities have an alternative academic ladder for instructors. Even with something analogous to assistant -> associate ~> analogous-to-tenured -> full.

It's possible to treat teaching faculty well. And even necessary in some in-demand fields where the private sector options remove the option of treating non-traditional faculty like crap.

In the US, lay people don't care about whatever formal meaning it has as a title. It's often used for any instructor at a college level.

(I guess not any instructors because there are TAs and the like, but people leading lectures or similar)

US community college instructor here. Students use the title professor as described here. I prefer either “Mr.” or my first name. I tell students, “Please don’t call me professor. Even my mom gave up on the idea of me ever getting a PhD.”

"Full Professor" is a just job title. Every institution has different standards.

In the US at least, there are thousands of (good) Bachelors, Masters, and sometimes even Ph.D.-granting colleges/universities that do not require an R1-level research agenda for the Full Professor rank.

And many students use "Professor" as a title for any instructor above the Highschool level, even for people who do not have the word "Professor" in their job title, such as ad juncts, full-time non-TT instructors, and sometimes even TAs.

This answer is US-specific

No, it’s just a title. Directional State University will have professors because they have a status hierarchy and titles are a significant part of that, and the total compensation.

As I understand the US system for four year universities

TOP Professor with an endowed chair University or Full Professor

Associate Professor (They have tenure and time in position)

Assistant Professor (They don’t have tenure. This is their first job and they want tenure here.)

BOTTOM Visiting Assistant Professor (They got denied tenure at a higher ranked university than they currently teach at and want tenure at that university or another one of similar rank.)

Adjunct Professor Someone with a non-academic job, expertise or position who teaches a university course because they enjoy doing so. Also a deluded holder of a Ph.D. who thinks this is still a part of academia. It is not. That is why it is below the bottom. These people are highly qualified, poorly compensated casual labour, desperately clinging to hope of an academic career after this makes any sense.

Your characterization of adjuncts is unnecessarily harsh. Many simply enjoy teaching in a university environment and aren't "desperately clinging" to anything.

Adjunct lecturing has terrible working conditions and benefits. It is a hobby, not a job. No one should do it as a job. Anyone who treats it as a job should be dissuaded from doing so as forcefully as possible to prevent further suffering. If you have a spouse with a good job and insurance or a trust fund by all means do it as a hobby, even an especially engrossing one.

Anyone who describes themself as an adjunct professor as if it’s sonetbing other than a hobby should be encouraged to get a job that isn’t shit. Teaching high school is vastly less intellectually rewarding but the holidays are better and so is the insurance and the pension.

> Teaching high school

I looked into this in my state. Getting your foot in the door as a teacher in a public school would require someone with a PhD in say, mathematics, physics or computer science, to go back to grad school for a masters in education. Not sure that's an option, and is also ridiculous considering I just spent six years in grad school. You could do TFA as a backdoor, in many states, but that is probably an even worse deal for you physically and emotionally than being an adjunct.

I’m not saying it’s a good deal for anyone capable of getting a doctorate. It’s clearly superior to being an adjunct though. They’re low paid, insecure, highly qualified labour. Once you have a doctorate and you have two years on the job market without a tenure track job you’re done. You’re never getting a tenure track job and you’re better off getting the he’ll out. There are some exceptions but assuming you’ll beat the odds is a losing bet. Even those two years of adjuncting, doing teaching and research and hoping is a losing bet but it’s not an insane, fallacious waste. Sometimes people make it out. For all practical purposes no one makes it to tenured Professor, of whatever rank, after two years adjuncting.

Many states have backdoors that are regularly used to hire exceptional non-traditional candidates such as practicing Lawyers, experienced Engineers, and science/engineering PhDs (even PhDs in the humanities if the PhD is from a prestigious name).

But you need to get your resume in front of the right people -- namely, folks in the central office (or maybe principals) who view your area as a strategic/difficult hiring area. Easy peasy in CS these days...

Also check out private schools.

>Also check out private schools.

My understanding is that private (k-12) schools pay dramatically less than (unionized) public schools. I've had family and friends who taught even at very expensive secular private schools, who then moved over to public school because the pay, pension and benefits were dramatically better.

I don't have hard numbers, but my impression from talking with family and friends is that you are much better off as an adjunct at a public college than as a k-12 teacher at even a prestigious private school or non-union charter school, though a union teaching job at a public k-12 school pays better and is much more stable than both.

It’s a terrible full-time job, but I had some excellent classes from adjunct professors who were working 3/4 time in industry and government.

In my experience, visiting assistant professors are often freshly-minted PhDs building up their portfolios before going on the job market “for real.” It’s like a postdoc but with much more emphasis on teaching.

VAP is basically adjunct, some places, postdoc others, otherwise this is accurate.

To reach the top rank yes... but academia is changing. Most professors now are contract, non-tenure track employees, especially in humanities.

Maybe I’m misusing the term? Though I do feel like I remember them being referred to as professors rather than instructors.

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