The ethics of a school calling non-tenure track professors "Asst. Professor"

[hilde]

A little "truth in advertising" question.

I've come across a selective liberal arts college that calls professors "Assistant Professors" regardless or whether they are tenure-track or not. I know people there, and see tenure track (TT) people are listed right along with contract teachers. It's as if they had the same job status.

I wrote to them because in most schools such a labeling would appear
to equate tenure track with non tenure track professors; this might
have the negative effect of seeming to disguise the true percentage
of adjunct labor. It might also seem irregular to ranking
organizations like US News
and World report, or to parents who thought their kid was going to be studying with researching teachers.

I asked their dean of personnel about it and he said, "Your question
surprises me because I have not heard this interpretation of rank
before.  Faculty ranks here say nothing about the possibility of
tenure."

QUESTION: What is your understanding of the meaning of
"Assistant Professor"? What does it mean in terms of tenure? Is this
school doing something unethical by calling professors "assistant professors" when they are not tenure track?

NOTE: those called Assistant Professors DO have Ph.D.'s and they DO have instructors listed, too. But they are definitely using the term AP equivocally.

[john_proctor]

I've seen "assistant professor" used to designate faculty who have a completed Ph.D. (where "Lecturer" or "Instructor" were used to denote those who were ABD or held only a Master's of some sort) even when they weren't tenure stream.  Normally, though, it's "Adjunct" or "Visiting" Assistant Professor (which I take to mean: "by course" or "on term contract" respectively).

[trabb]

I agree with John Proctor (whose 43 posts and a single star, by the way, have put to rest my goal of achieving multiple stars).

My cynical side would want to ask the following questions of this administrator.

• If faculty ranks say nothing about the possibility of tenure, can non-tenure-track faculty members be promoted to associate or even full professor?
• Similarly, if we're going to separate the title "assistant professor" from the possibility of achieving tenure, then are non-tt assistants paid the same as tt assistants?

My guess is that the answers are "no" and "no".  If that's the case, then I think your suspicion that this is a lack of truth in advertising is correct.

Off the top of my head, I can think of only two ways in which this policy might benefit the non-tt assistant profs:

• It avoids the problem of students treating non-tt faculty different than tt.  Students don't usually understand all the intricacies, but they surely do recognize the difference between "Assistant Professor Smith" and "Visiting Adjunct Non-Tenure-Track Instructor Smith."
• It may help on the job market.  Even to search committee members who do understand all the intricacies, "Assistant Professor Smith" sounds a heck of a lot better than "Visiting Adjunct..."  This benefits the school too, by the way.  Once a university concedes that they will use non-tt faculty, they will do best to find permanent career adjuncts (spouses of tenured faculty, etc.) and/or to do everything possible to ensure that their non-tt people bounce up to decent tt jobs.  The title may help with that.

Wow - I love the list feature:)

[hilde]

Here's a friend's comment:

Let us ask:

Wouldn't it be objectionable if, say, we found a college using the
title "Professor" in a way that did not discriminate between
adjuncts, tt, and tenured?  Wouldn't it be misleading to say that
all members of such a department were "Full Professors"?

Think of all the funding-granting institutions that presume that
"assistant" (unqualified) means tt.  Think of how one might count
the number of faculty "lines" in a department (non-tt don't count).
How does one distinguish between "voting" and "non-voting" faculty?
It seem that once you blur the connection between the title
("assistant") and the commitment (tenure track), all kinds of
opportunity for confusion arises.

[busyslinky]

A school can call anyone anything they want.  I have seen a number of different approaches and you can be associate or full professor without being on the tenure track.

Some schools even use the term clinical professor or professor of practice to differentiate.  But, as far as I am aware, there are no concrete standardized definitions of requirements or names for different positions.  It is a school and sometimes even a discipline thing.

So, no ethical issues as far as I can see.  What would be unethical about it? What is ethics?

[hilde]

What is being debated here is *not* whether a school can "do anything they want." That, first of all is not true. Schools are bound in their practices by any number of constraints from accrediting institutions, the AAUP, and their desire to seem "upright" in their marketing and labor practices to their employees and customers.

The ethical consideration is raised by any number of issues. Here is a list of concerns I have thought of and also raised by people I have discussed this with:

Given that the school is a liberal arts college, and that all similar profile schools (that I can see) do not use titles in this ambiguous way...issues raised include:

(1) there is the fact that two people with substantially different job profiles (regarding pay, research and service obligations, and prospects for advancement to permanent employment) are called the same thing. Is it fair to the person who survived an extensive national search to be lumped in with someone who's been teaching English comp (e.g.) for the past decade? And is it fair to the person teaching English comp. to give them a title that implies they have better pay and job security than they actually do? (2) What of parents who are choosing between schools based upon the number of TT faculty who will actually teach and grade their child? Are they getting an accurate picture? (3) What of the job occupant in a "fake" AP job. Will these years as an AP be counted if they go on to another AP job that IS TT? Has the tenure clock started or not? Should they research as a fake AP or not? Will it count? (4) the points raised above also apply--how many tenure lines are there? Should grants go to someone called AP if it's not TT and the granting agent doesn't think to ask about an assumed rule? (5) What of rankings--is US News and World Report to sort out how many TT's there *really* are when estimating how much research a school does and what it's student-teacher ratio should be? (6) What about other schools in competition with this school? Should they change their website to list "lecturers" as "assistant professors" so they can seem as flush with TT people as their competitor seems to be?

Perhaps others agree with the previous poster that "schools can do anything they want" but then my question would be, would some of the above consequences come to pass? Would they be worth the price of "doing what one wants"?

[busyslinky]

The point was there are no standardized and required definitions, by AAUP or anyone else about job titles.  This is a school specific decision.  Internationally, it is quite different as well.

I don't see it as an ethical issue at all.  What you are called has very little to how much you are paid.  What matters most is what is included in your experiences.  You could be an full professor at some schools, but wouldn't even be considered for a lecturer at others.  Different schools have different requirements and different job titles.

You can say tenure track or non-tenure track if you want.  But, a professor or assistant professor or lecturer or reader or etc., means whatever the school wants it to mean. 

I still see it as a school can do anything it wants anyway. 

[john_proctor]

I was thinking about this just now and realized that I do know an exception to my below post.

Nearly all the Ivies.

The "junior faculty" they hire are normally on 2 or 3 year contracts. There is no assurance of being "tenure stream."  Most of their hires (particularly at grad level, and in my experience always for their religion /divinity school faculty) are non-tenure stream, "assistant professors."

Professors are often hired at that level via senior searches.  Searches only happen when another full professor dies or retires (or if there's suddenly money for a new chair).  In the mean, the new hires have a three year renewable (once) contract (usually).  They sit on dissertations, teach a regular load, participate in faculty meetings and on university committees, etc.  They have no assurance at all of tenure.  If there is nothing open at the end of their second contract, they get a warm handshake and good wishes (yes, I know, I'm cynical enough to believe, too, that every once in a while, someone makes a place for a junior faculty.  It really rarely happens, though).  If there is an opening, they're in the general candidate pool like everyone else.

Essentially, every junior appointment at an Ivy is a VAP.

Very, very few assistant profs. at the ivies ever make full prof at the same university (we had a joke: how do you get tenure at Yale?  Get an offer to teach at Harvard).

They've been doing it that way for a couple of centuries, as far as I know.  So, while the current AAUP endorsed system may be the de facto "standard" (and there really is no consistent standard at American universities that I've seen), it may well be the more "modern."

[busyslinky]

In many of these weird tenure situations and non-tenure track or whatever, the ivies set their own rules too.  There are just too many variations that exist out there and they continually change. 

The point is that there are no standards of who is what and what they get paid.  Even state schools have a difficult time with titles and use pay scales in many situations to define positions.

So, maybe when you apply to schools, ask them to give you a title you like, if it looks better.  Negotiate a better title for say $500 less in salary, if it means that much to you.

What is most important is what is on your vita in terms of teaching experiences (levels, types of courses, etc.) and, in my opinion, more importantly, your research (publications, grantsmanship, projects, fellowships, etc.) rather than title.  Most schools can and see clearly through this by your vita and experiences.

In terms of rankings and ratings by US news and world report, I don't think they care about titles, but about % Ph.D's and maybe Tenure track faculty.  The title is just an ornament.

[hilde]

I think these answers are helping me understand the issue a bit better. I cannot help but think that some of the considerations I raised above need to be addressed to dissolve the ethical issue. (Particularly the issue of calling people at the same school with different job responsibilities by the same title.) The fact that titles are used loosely doesn't say there are no consequences. Busylinky has been very helpful to the question, but has not addressed them all; his/her post has helped me see that some see universities as not as bound by convention as I had assumed.

I'd like to hear from others about that, too.

As for John_Proctor's reply about Ivies, I knew that was the case at some of the Ivies but I did not assume it was standard for them all.

Still, the Ivies are a small set of schools. Their standard does not apply to most liberal arts colleges or universities, does it? How could it? The cost of searches would bury most departments.

I appreciate your input and am gradually being dislodged from the idea that there is an ethical stake here. But not yet.

[busyslinky]

Hilde,

I do agree with you in that if an organization continuously practices and has specific definitions for this one thing and then decides to start changing it with one person versus another arbitrarily and capriciously, then you get into ethical issues.  But, I think this title thing is too gray to really say someone is doing something right or wrong.

But, you may be right and I may be wrong.  I'm just going by my experiences.

[sheepdog_working]

I'm far more troubled by some individuals' tendency to "massage" their own job titles.  I've seen ABDs call themselves "Dr.," and I've seen an adjunct refer to herself as "a professor in such-and-such department" (in a school in which adjuncts are definitely *not* called professors).  I've also heard one person who adjuncts in two departments refer to herself as having a "joint appointment." 

[john_proctor]

Sheepdog_at_work, I would very much agree.

I'd just add, though, the one caveat that one does not always control what others call one.  I got mail (I was teaching as an abd) to "Dr. Proctor."  I also had people, when I was a VAP, refer to me shorthandedly (a couple of times in a formal introduction) as "Professor Proctor" or "a professor in the x department."

I assume you are referring to people presenting themselves deceptively.

[gastr1]

I know of one such school that practices what the OP has elucidated, but there were definite distinctions for the non-tenture track Asst Prof., the Visiting Asst. Prof., and the reg'lar ol' adjunct. The non-tt Asst. Profs were generally on renewable one- to three-year contracts and were paid a salary at beginning tt level. The Visiting people were what you would expect: although paid at tt level, once their contracts expired they had to go elsewhere, hence "visiting" and "renewable/non-renewable." Both of these positions received benefits in accordance with tt faculty, and were evaluated based on the traditional categories of teaching, research, and service.

Adjuncts, on the other hand, were paid by the course at a ridiculously low level and had no expectations of a standardized course load from one semester the next, or even if they would have a job from one semester to the next. They received no benefits and were evaluated only on their teaching.

Whether the renewable-contract, non-tt Asst Prof is actually an adjunct or not by standard definition doesn't really apply, as universities have/are utilizing the titles according to their own set of standardized descriptions, from what I can tell. Any way you cut it, the non-tt Asst Prof on renewable contracts is NOT equal to an adjunct by said univ definitions.

What I do fear from this, however, is that the renewable contract non-tt Asst Prof positions are the model for those who would eliminate tenure altogether.

[hilde]

gastr1 raises an excellent point:
"What I do fear from this, however, is that the renewable contract non-tt Asst Prof positions are the model for those who would eliminate tenure altogether."
In fact there are schools that have tried this. One, Rhodes College in Memphis, tried this in the early 1990's but it was reversed by faculty after a few years.

But gastr's point leads me to wonder whether the self-serving use of titles—the blurring of the lines, if you will—provides long-term cover for a gradual move away from tenure. Shareholders look! Disposable everything!

All of a sudden, a pod on every nightstand, so to speak.

Ok, so I'm waxing a bit paranoid here, but maybe I've been spooked by the general economic trend toward outsourcing.