3 ms·

Academia in general sticks surprisingly close to the guild model. You have professors as masters, postdocs as journeymen, grad students as apprentices, and unde

• robotresearcher 13y ago
  And the tenure track Assistant Professor position gives you five years as an apprentice master.
• dragonwriter 13y ago
  Academia is designed on the guild model, though the original correspondences are more: undergraduate students = apprentices, graduate students = journeymen, graduate degree holders = masters
  • _delirium 13y ago
    Yeah, the traditional distinction between professors and degree holders who aren't professors wasn't part of the guild-training system, but probably better maps onto an idea like patronage. Someone who completed the doctorate was "done" with the training process, a certified master fully licensed to hold lectures and supervise theses. But this did not in itself come with any salary or position. The exact situation varied by country, but in Germany such a person might be a Privatdozent, someone who earned a living by giving lectures (often traveling from university to university) and tutoring students. That's somewhat analogous to a master painter who subsequently earned a living from portrait commissions. A professor then is simply a master who, rather than earning a living as a craftsman, has a position and salary paid by a patron or institution. One might compare to a painter who became a salaried court painter, or one who received regular stipends from the Académie de peinture et de sculpture, rather than earning an income from seeking commissions or giving lessons. I think the common way people view the situation has changed in part because these craft occupations are more difficult to sustain, so you're not really seen as "done" until you've landed a regular full-time job. Like being a painter without a salary, being a lecturer without a salary is nowadays a very precarious position. There used to be enough wealthy patrons paying enough in portrait commissions and tutoring fees for such careers to be make for a decent middle-class living, but it's not a common career anymore, so now people typically either look for a full-time academic position, or look for a full-time job elsewhere. You can temporarily hang around academia as an adjunct lecturer, but it's not a good or stable living.
  • cperciva 13y ago
    undergraduate students = apprentices, graduate students = journeymen, graduate degree holders = masters Closer, but still not quite right. The concept of graduate students is quite a recent one; and until recently the MA was the standard undergraduate degree. This is still seen at Oxford and Cambridge: After 3 years of study, you write examinations and receive the BA, whereupon you leave the university; 4 years later, you receive the MA. (And until very recently, upon applying to receive the MA you had to certify that you had "continued to practice" in the intervening years.)
    • _delirium 13y ago
      A masters being the standard undergraduate degree is still roughly true in Denmark, though in a bit different format. The traditional undergraduate degree was a single 5-year program. Under the EU's Bologna Process harmonization, this has been split into a 3-year BA/BSc, and a 2-year MA/MSc. But in part because this is recent, many people see a BA/BSc as only 60% of a degree, not a place to stop and go get a job. So getting a Masters to "complete" the undergraduate program is still sort-of expected, though not everyone does it. Unlike in the U.S., Masters and PhD students are therefore not lumped together as "graduate students". Bachelors and Masters students are instead lumped together as "students", i.e. people who are taking an undergraduate education, often living in dorms, and receiving a small stipend (the SU) to support their cost of living. PhD students, by contrast, are junior research staff, employed with a proper salary (typically ~$50k), living in their own apartments or houses, entitled to attend departmental meetings, etc.