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Indeed, in the English-speaking world there are two main systems of academic ranks: the North American system (primarily US and Canada) and the traditional Brit
by skissane 4y ago
Indeed, in the English-speaking world there are two main systems of academic ranks: the North American system (primarily US and Canada) and the traditional British system (most of the rest of it). This article is discussing the first system without acknowledging the second, or the differences between the two.
- jholman 4y agoThe scope of the article is in the first sentence.
- ggm 4y agoThe author is no stranger to reading and research about matters considerably more complex than the nature of tertiary educational organisation worldwide and has an extensive readership outside the USA. If this was about Roman era educational norms he'd have done a French metric tonne more work.
- jholman 4y agoAgain, who are you to determine what he chooses to write about? Your entire framing of what is going on is simply off-base, so the point you attempt to make about Devereaux's competence is beside the point. He is choosing to write about the American academic industry, incidentally speaking far more about the humanities than about other fields. The title of the article simplifies that, as all article titles do. That's just how titles work. He has researched his subject fairly extensively, as far as I can tell. If you want an article about non-American academy, perhaps including STEM fields, write the damn article yourself.
- ggm 4y agoNobody decides what he writes but himself. I read the blog frequently and they're well written and researched. I'm tired of Americentrism, and I think this piece would have been better for a wider sweep. I'm interested in how it differs from Japan, or Germany or the UK. I'd be interested in how an American academic understands this.
- jholman 4y agoThat makes sense to me.
- skissane 4y agoEven if you are going to limit your scope, a brief expression of awareness of things beyond it is called for-something absent here. Furthermore, the scope seems arbitrarily limited - it isn’t just the US system, the Canadian system is largely the same as far as ranks go - so why is the scope described as just “American”, as opposed to “US and Canada”?
- labster 4y agoThe author is a Roman military history PhD talking about his personal experience in academia for the most part. It’s not hard to see the current system is broken, after all, but only if you’re in the middle of it. There are other sources if you want an in-depth view; the target audience is people who don’t even know what an adjunct is.
- denton-scratch 4y agoThe author is also very much a teacher; his goal, I think, is to educate primarily his own students, firstly in how to do history, and secondly in how not to fail as a student. He's written more than one article along these lines. Perhaps the shortage of navigation is a problem if you're just dipping in, or skimming. I check out Devereaux's blog every Friday, and if the article is interesting, I plough through the whole thing, including the footnotes. If I wanted to do history at Uni, I'd like to have him as my teacher.
- mnky9800n 4y agoThe author says they only have worked in the American system. Having worked in the USA, Japan, and Europe in academia I find that American academics don't typically know the system in America isn't the same everywhere else.
- tough 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americentrism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americentrism Extends to anything really. Hard to know better when you never left your country. (Majority of Americans don't hold a Passport)
- ljlolel 4y agoMajority of Europeans haven’t left Europe. It’s true anywhere.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- skissane 4y ago> Majority of Europeans haven’t left Europe. That’s not an apples-to-apples comparison. The US is a country, and Europe is a continent containing almost 50 separate countries. And before anyone says “US states are like countries”-the states of the US are no more “like countries” than the states of Germany are Only 40% of Americans own a passport, compared to 76% of people in the UK - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42586638 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42586638
- panda888888 4y agoOther countries also use different systems. For instance, Israel traditionally only has two ranks: "Professor" which is someone who has tenure, and "Lecturer" which is anyone without tenure.
- skissane 4y ago> Israel traditionally only has two ranks: "Professor" which is someone who has tenure, and "Lecturer" which is anyone without tenure. That’s not what Wikipedia says: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_ranks_in_Israel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_ranks_in_Israel According to Wikipedia, Israel traditionally uses a hybrid of the British and German systems, including the British rank of “senior lecturer”, albeit Technion has renamed that to the American “associate professor”