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[gastr1]

I think you're right to be spooked, Hilde. The school in particular is a very highly-ranked private university. Proctor's point about all the process of selecting tenured faculty at Ivy institutions allows even more potential ammunition for those who would eliminate tenure.

[monikerphobe]

I am considering pursuing a PhD and to get a little research about what's out there now, I've been scouring the job adverts at the CHE.  I only looked at subject areas where I thought I might actually have the expertise to teach (I'm a poli sci grad but prefer theory to say international relations, so never looked at adverts for international relations teaching, for example).  I will note that there were a whole 7 jobs out of 22 total.  At any rate, almost all of those 7 jobs were adverts desiring "assistant professor, non-tenure track" and generally for a 1 year contract.  Is this really nothing more than a gussied up ad for an adjunct?  Is that the problem being referred to here by Hilde?  What would you prefer such listing to be posted as?  Perhaps this would actually be better posted as a "visiting assistant professor"?  I've worked at a university for almost 12 years and had no idea this was so convoluted.  I still remember when I was new and asked a "visiting" professor where he was visiting from.  His response was to say he was visiting from the eastern part of town known as the "Valley".

[gastr1]

Monikerphobe--
Yes, it's confusing. I learned about it after I had a job!

The big and imporatant difference in your recent experience is whether those postings are renewable positions or not. You can assume that the positions includes benefits and will be treated as a full member of the department, although at my university, only tt faculty are eligible for grants and travel money. Sometimes sabbatical replacements are listed as "one-year non tt asst prof." In my department, we lost a faculty member this year too late to run a full search, so we hired a one-year, non-renewable, non-tt asst prof. This doesn't mean that we are getting rid of tenure...

But my earlier point is that these positions are not the same as adjunct positions by any stretch and universities are correct in distinguishing them. Whether they are correct in calling them "Assistant Professor" is another matter.

[monikerphobe]

Out of all the postings, only one, that I can recall was a 1 year contract and possibly renewable.  So then, what should they be called?  Not instructor as that generally means someone without a PhD I'd thought.  Not adjunct as it's not the same job at all.  Fixed term?  I know we have some contract, renewable positions that are termed "fixed term" but only in a couple of certain job roles (all law school faculty too, I think).

[john_proctor]

Reader or Lecturer? 

There are a good many adds I see, as well, for one year, non-tenure track assist. prof.  I've always assumed these were: 1. to fill in a gap from a maternity or research leave; 2. to hold a position until a formal, tt search can be undertaken; 3. likely best listed as a vap or some such.

[hilde]

I just looked over my fields job listings, in Philosophy.

The preferred term is "Instructor". This is used to indicate what a tenure track hire will be called if ABD; it is also used to indicate a one-year committment.

Visiting Assistant, as I understand it for my field, means, "temporary-replacement-for-tenure-track-line."

[gastr1]

"Visiting Assistant, as I understand it for my field, means, "temporary-replacement-for-tenure-track-line."

Well, but that isn't exclusively what the term is used for. In my field, for example, a visiting position is often used as a permamently rotating one,  to bring in a younger, "fresh ideas" type (some schools use, sich as my own, because for whatever reason they do not have another tt line avaialble in the department). I know of three schools that do this "young scholar" thing in my field: Trinity University in San Antonio, Davidson College, and Washington University in St. Louis. All private schools...hmmm.

[alsorun]

I think your people take your title too seriously. My guess: most of you are in a teaching focused university.

[helpful]

All students call me Professor. They don't make any distinction between tenured, non tenured, non tenure track or even people without doctorates.

Our university calls non tenure track profs Asst Professor as the contract says that is what they are, even if they are on contract.

[helpful]

We don't use the term adjunct here. We call them part time instructors. The term most being used by those organizing these people is "contigent faculty". The word adjunct diminishes the value of the work these people do. "Adjunct"{ sounds like "less than full".

[anon2]

why in the world is this considered an ethical question???

[alsorun]

Because they have high moral standard.

why in the world is this considered an ethical question???

[busyslinky]

I think it is safer to call everyone the 'generic' professor when addressing them instead of Dr., because not everyone has the Ph.D.

but a professor professes.  I actually can call a lot of people I know professor because they do a lot of professing.

[hilde]

anon2 and alsorun: I can see this thread is losing energy. The ethical stakes were outlined, at length, in two of my first page posts.

To posters who took a moment to read the earlier posts and respond, I thank you. Your responses were helpful. In some cases, you helped affirm where the ethical stakes really were high for this question. In others, you showed me how varied the use of the term assistant professor really is--and that helps lower the stakes of the issue a bit.

It seems the consensus that there is no ethical violation for schools to use the term "assistant professor" differently across the country.

So, here is my own conclusion; there are ultimately two issues for me: 1. Is a school calling two very different jobs by the same name? (In the case that inspired this post, they are). and 2. Is a school using vagueness of job title to disguise the percent of their faculty that are tenure track (they are). What makes this "ethical" as an infraction? Well, in (1) they are committing  workplace inequities using the covering language of job titles and in (2) they are deceiving those populations who might need to have accurate information about the nature of their work force. In short, cheating and lying. Are these capital crimes? Probably not, but I wouldn't be proud to admit doing them.

[busyslinky]

I am not sure the argument has been made, at least to me, that they are using these titles to mask the amount of tenure-track jobs they do or don't have.  Do they say the assistant professor line it a t-t job and then it is only a 1 year contract?  If that is the case, that is unethical.  Are you sure they report the assistant professor position as a t-t.  It seems to me this is conjecture and not fact.