3 ms·

Outranks isn't the right term for it. "Doctor" is an educational description, that one is qualified to teach on the subject. "Professor" is a job description,

Outranks isn't the right term for it. "Doctor" is an educational description, that one is qualified to teach on the subject. "Professor" is a job description, that one is currently teaching. If a person retires, they are no longer a Professor, but they are still a Doctor.

chrisseaton 6y ago
Ah - in the UK 'Professor' is a rank and you keep it after you retire.
- MereInterest 6y ago
  Interesting, and that's a cultural difference that I wasn't aware of. For context, I'm from the US, and very few people insist on titles of any kind. In grad school, most of the professors went by first names only. That said, some of the professors were German and had horror stories of their professors getting enraged at students having the wrong order of titles in "Herr Professor Doktor Doktor", or forgetting the appropriate number of "Doktor"s for each professor. How much of that is a location-based difference or a generational difference, I couldn't say.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    Yes you wouldn’t use Dr or Prof in normal speech in person in the UK either - that’d be very dorky.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      Not at a neighbor's barbecue, but in a US academic setting, it would be pretty natural in my experience to address someone as "professor" even if you knew them well enough to also refer to them by their first name. Doctor would not be particularly natural.
- gkop 6y ago
  In the US there is a high rank of Professor, Professor Emeritus, that specifically confers that it is kept after retirement.
- TheCoelacanth 6y ago
  "Professor" is the US is roughly equivalent to "lecturer" in the UK, if I understand correctly. Basically any permanent teaching position at a university and even some of the non-permanent ones are called "professor" in the US.
  - valarauko 6y ago
    "Lecturer" in the UK is roughly equivalent to "Assistant Professor" in the US. Lecturer -> Senior Lecturer -> Reader -> Professor. In the US, it's Assistant Prof. -> Associate Prof. -> Prof. The rank of "Professor" is roughly equivalent in both countries.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      So almost everyone who teaches in a US university is a automatically a 'professor'?
      - valarauko 6y ago
        No, calling an "Assistant Professor" a Professor is like calling a "Major general" a "General". I have only ever heard full Professors referred to as Professors, and Assistant or Associate Professors are called by their full title, or simply "Dr.". It's possible some students might call them professors, but it's not the proper term. In practice, these are tenure track positions, and not all teaching staff have them. For example, as a postdoc, I might teach a course at a college nearby. They might refer to me as "Adjunct professor", which is a temporary non-tenure-track position.
        SeanLuke 6y ago
        > It's possible some students might call them professors, but it's not the proper term. Some students? All students. The usage of "professor" in the US is much like the usage of "lisp" in programming. There are many lisps (scheme, elisp,...), but there is only one Lisp (that is, Common Lisp). Similarly, "professor" does indeed mean "Full professor". But students and staff in most universities call nearly all faculty "Professor X", whether they are assistant, associate, full, emeritus, adjunct, term, or whatnot. Indeed many US institutions have since invented official titles for, for example, instructors or adjunct faculty, which explicitly include the word "professor". I became a professor a month after I got my PhD. Thus for my whole life I had been Sean, then for one month I was Dr. Luke, and then suddenly I was Prof. Luke. It has never been comfortable. I let the undergrads and some MS students call me Professor Luke -- I can't stop them -- but the PhDs, particularly those who are coauthors with me on papers, generally call me Sean.

chrisseaton 6y ago

Ah - in the UK 'Professor' is a rank and you keep it after you retire.

MereInterest 6y ago
Interesting, and that's a cultural difference that I wasn't aware of. For context, I'm from the US, and very few people insist on titles of any kind. In grad school, most of the professors went by first names only. That said, some of the professors were German and had horror stories of their professors getting enraged at students having the wrong order of titles in "Herr Professor Doktor Doktor", or forgetting the appropriate number of "Doktor"s for each professor. How much of that is a location-based difference or a generational difference, I couldn't say.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  Yes you wouldn’t use Dr or Prof in normal speech in person in the UK either - that’d be very dorky.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Not at a neighbor's barbecue, but in a US academic setting, it would be pretty natural in my experience to address someone as "professor" even if you knew them well enough to also refer to them by their first name. Doctor would not be particularly natural.
gkop 6y ago
In the US there is a high rank of Professor, Professor Emeritus, that specifically confers that it is kept after retirement.
TheCoelacanth 6y ago
"Professor" is the US is roughly equivalent to "lecturer" in the UK, if I understand correctly. Basically any permanent teaching position at a university and even some of the non-permanent ones are called "professor" in the US.
- valarauko 6y ago
  "Lecturer" in the UK is roughly equivalent to "Assistant Professor" in the US. Lecturer -> Senior Lecturer -> Reader -> Professor. In the US, it's Assistant Prof. -> Associate Prof. -> Prof. The rank of "Professor" is roughly equivalent in both countries.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    So almost everyone who teaches in a US university is a automatically a 'professor'?
    - valarauko 6y ago
      No, calling an "Assistant Professor" a Professor is like calling a "Major general" a "General". I have only ever heard full Professors referred to as Professors, and Assistant or Associate Professors are called by their full title, or simply "Dr.". It's possible some students might call them professors, but it's not the proper term. In practice, these are tenure track positions, and not all teaching staff have them. For example, as a postdoc, I might teach a course at a college nearby. They might refer to me as "Adjunct professor", which is a temporary non-tenure-track position.
      - SeanLuke 6y ago
        > It's possible some students might call them professors, but it's not the proper term. Some students? All students. The usage of "professor" in the US is much like the usage of "lisp" in programming. There are many lisps (scheme, elisp,...), but there is only one Lisp (that is, Common Lisp). Similarly, "professor" does indeed mean "Full professor". But students and staff in most universities call nearly all faculty "Professor X", whether they are assistant, associate, full, emeritus, adjunct, term, or whatnot. Indeed many US institutions have since invented official titles for, for example, instructors or adjunct faculty, which explicitly include the word "professor". I became a professor a month after I got my PhD. Thus for my whole life I had been Sean, then for one month I was Dr. Luke, and then suddenly I was Prof. Luke. It has never been comfortable. I let the undergrads and some MS students call me Professor Luke -- I can't stop them -- but the PhDs, particularly those who are coauthors with me on papers, generally call me Sean.