4 ms·

Did you have a PhD or prior experience as a professor? Or was this just like "you're a smart and knowledgeable person, so you're welcome to come be a professor

by schoen 1y ago

Did you have a PhD or prior experience as a professor? Or was this just like "you're a smart and knowledgeable person, so you're welcome to come be a professor at our institution"? The second is culturally hard for me to imagine in Germany, but if so, that could show even more strongly how extreme the situation is!

anovikov 1y ago
It most certainly means that "under a normal run of things it's a huge competition from qualified PhDs to become a full tenured professor so it means years on poorly paid intermediate positions, here there are <1.0 candidates per position so you are automatically approved".
benterix 1y ago
No, the second would be both absurd and illegal, not the parent but we're talking about lack of competition here, not the end of civilization.
- schoen 1y ago
  I think it's a striking example of the German culture in question that bypassing credential rules for professorships is "absurd and illegal". In other countries, academic labor unions might be mad about it, but it's theoretically possible that some universities might occasionally choose to grant academic teaching positions to people with unusual backgrounds. One of my great teachers at UC Berkeley was Brian Harvey, who had a PhD in education (not computer science) and only a master's degree in computer science. He was made a "lecturer with security of employment" (he could design and run courses, including courses that were mandatory for the computer science major, and give grades). David D. Friedman was a law professor at Santa Clara University and had a physics PhD and no law degree of any kind. These aren't quite the examples I want, because both of these people do have PhDs, just not in the subjects that they taught. Wikipedia gives seven examples of famous U.S. professors who in fact had no doctoral degree, and in a few cases no postgraduate education at all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professors_in_the_United_States#Overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professors_in_the_United_State... This is called "exceptional" there, and it's clearly very rare (although all of the people mentioned are quite famous, and there are presumably less famous examples); I just mean to make the cultural point that outside of Germany people tend to believe that universities are in principle allowed to make such exceptions. (There are also tertiary education institutions like community colleges that more routinely allow people without PhDs to teach, but these probably aren't relevant here because they're mostly not called universities and mostly can't issue bachelor's or higher degrees.)
niemandhier 1y ago
I have a phd and I am working as a professional scientist, my abysmal publication list disqualifies me under normal conditions from getting a professor position.

by schoen 1y ago

anovikov 1y ago

It most certainly means that "under a normal run of things it's a huge competition from qualified PhDs to become a full tenured professor so it means years on poorly paid intermediate positions, here there are <1.0 candidates per position so you are automatically approved".

benterix 1y ago

No, the second would be both absurd and illegal, not the parent but we're talking about lack of competition here, not the end of civilization.

schoen 1y ago
I think it's a striking example of the German culture in question that bypassing credential rules for professorships is "absurd and illegal". In other countries, academic labor unions might be mad about it, but it's theoretically possible that some universities might occasionally choose to grant academic teaching positions to people with unusual backgrounds. One of my great teachers at UC Berkeley was Brian Harvey, who had a PhD in education (not computer science) and only a master's degree in computer science. He was made a "lecturer with security of employment" (he could design and run courses, including courses that were mandatory for the computer science major, and give grades). David D. Friedman was a law professor at Santa Clara University and had a physics PhD and no law degree of any kind. These aren't quite the examples I want, because both of these people do have PhDs, just not in the subjects that they taught. Wikipedia gives seven examples of famous U.S. professors who in fact had no doctoral degree, and in a few cases no postgraduate education at all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professors_in_the_United_States#Overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professors_in_the_United_State... This is called "exceptional" there, and it's clearly very rare (although all of the people mentioned are quite famous, and there are presumably less famous examples); I just mean to make the cultural point that outside of Germany people tend to believe that universities are in principle allowed to make such exceptions. (There are also tertiary education institutions like community colleges that more routinely allow people without PhDs to teach, but these probably aren't relevant here because they're mostly not called universities and mostly can't issue bachelor's or higher degrees.)

niemandhier 1y ago

I have a phd and I am working as a professional scientist, my abysmal publication list disqualifies me under normal conditions from getting a professor position.