Who wouldn’t like more salary and higher status? Understandably, then, it is tempting for academics to bid for promotion as soon as the opportunity seems to arise. Associate professors who have been at that rank for a few years are often eager to become full members of the academic guild. How nice it would be to reach the top of the career ladder soon.
The problem is that human beings tend to overestimate their capabilities and accomplishments. That’s why large majorities of survey respondents rate themselves as above-average drivers, spouses, and parents. Academics are not exempt from that tendency: We often have exaggerated views of our own qualities and contributions.
After all, we struggle hard to make sense of a heap of data, to explain complex actions, or to distill generalizations from a variety of cases. When we finally come up with an answer to those puzzles, we are impressed by our own insights. By contrast, when we read about other scholars’ findings, those often appear so logical that — in hindsight — they look obvious. Certainly the problem that they solved cannot have been as complicated as the riddle that we managed to unravel.
Because many scholars overvalue their own contributions, they are tempted to bid for promotion too early. After all, they think they deserve this recognition. In fact, their department probably has several full professors who have less to show for themselves on their CVs, because academic standards used to be lower in earlier decades. Intergenerational comparisons reinforce the desire to initiate one’s candidacy soon.
Even those associate professors with an inkling that their case is borderline may try to go up for promotion. Would their colleagues really vote them down? Unsuccessful tenure candidates leave their departments within a year so that the uncomfortable situation will pass. But an associate professor is a permanent fixture in a department. A negative vote at promotion time could breed lasting discontent and awkward encounters for years to come.
Some associate professors may conclude that colleagues would want to avoid such an unpleasant situation. Eager candidates may gamble that once they start the promotion process, their department would feel compelled to support them even if their track record was not very strong. Those calculations can inspire attempts to “force” an early promotion.
Other factors can reinforce the tendency of associate professors to bid for promotion prematurely. Faculty members who have won tenure have had time to establish links via scholarly collaborations, intellectual exchanges, and personal friendships inside their department and university. Even those with a limited record of research and publication since tenure may bet that their network will guarantee sufficient support at promotion time.
But it’s a wager they may well lose.
My goal in writing this is to advise strongly against the natural urge to bid for promotion as soon as it seems possible. I wrote about this tendency in my own field in a recent article for the American Political Science Association, but the problem arises across academe. Although the risks of rejection may appear low, there are important reputational costs.
Long term, it is much better to wait for a couple of years, round off your academic portfolio, and then clear the promotion hurdle with ease. Why risk running afoul of a department or university’s promotion standards? Even if you do narrowly scrape by, the damage to your academic reputation can be high — and lasting. In our profession, the impression we make on our colleagues matters a great deal for our future opportunities and prospects. Therefore, a Pyrrhic victory at promotion time can actually amount to defeat.
Consider the following: Tenure and promotion are the two occasions when our scholarship and performance face the most thorough and systematic scrutiny. Whoever participates in those important decisions — inside our department, our university, and our field — forms a well-founded opinion. Resting on such a solid base, that impression is likely to persist. Yet those same colleagues are also likely to be involved in future decisions that affect our careers, such as applications for academic leaves or for research grants. Reputations are sticky and do not easily change, so we have every incentive to make a good impression.
Evaluations by external referees and university administrators are even more likely to persist, since we interact with those people far less often than with our departmental colleagues. Being asked to evaluate a weak or borderline promotion case is uncomfortable and leaves a bad impression, even if in the end, an associate professor narrowly wins promotion.
The reputational cost is often invisible to the candidate. But it has lasting effects. Most external reviewers, for instance, are leading scholars and are likely to participate in important future decisions, such as conference invitations or grant applications. Can they wholeheartedly support a scholar who had a weak case at promotion time? Reputational damage closes off opportunities. Similarly, deans or provosts do not like thin promotion files. Their negative impression of the candidate may very likely linger for years. Would they want to appoint such a colleague to an attractive administrative position, for instance?
Moreover, the reputational cost extends to the department that signed off on a problematic case and saddled university administrators with an unpleasant decision. Deans and provosts do not respect departments that take the easy way out, approve weak promotion cases, and send the problem upward.
For these reasons, associate professors and their departments face strong incentives to avoid premature promotion bids. It is much better to wait for another year or two, establish a strong record of research and publication, and then sail through the process. A roundly successful candidate wins respect, greater influence inside the department, added backing from deans and provosts, and support from some “big names” in the field. Those reputational gains are worth much more than the Pyrrhic conquest of getting a salary increase earlier than you deserve.
How, then, can associate professors assess whether they have established a strong case for promotion?
The answer obviously depends on the type of institution: Is it oriented more toward teaching or research? How ambitious is it in its research and publication standards? So far I’ve offered general advice that applies to all kinds of professors, but the following four suggestions are probably relevant mostly for faculty at research universities.
Look at recent successful promotions in your department — then add a safety margin. Departments are committed to consistency, for academic and legal reasons. The CVs of recently promoted full professors are, therefore, good reference points. Avoid those cases where someone just scraped by. Moreover, you need to do a bit better than your recent predecessors. Most departments want to improve, so their standards gradually rise. The idea here is to correct for the tendency to overestimate your own accomplishments.
Have a book on the table (or an equivalent set of articles). In my field of political science, many promotions to full rank rest centrally on a post-tenure book. Wait until that volume is published. Many books are “under contract,” yet never see the light of day — or at least not for many years. The travails of book publishing can raise a lot of eyebrows during the promotion process. It’s much harder to argue about a book that everybody can weigh in their hands.
Consult with some reasonably demanding colleagues. A CV and published books constitute objective evidence and should form the core of a promotion case. But it’s not just a matter of bean counting; there is always a margin of interpretation and judgment. So it makes sense to ask experienced colleagues about your readiness for promotion. Avoid your friends, who may be too eager to make you feel good. Instead, seek out the self-appointed guardians of academic standards, which many departments have. Brace yourself for an honest assessment — which is most useful from a long-term career perspective.
Take to heart the advice from departmental decision-makers. Many departmental promotion committees conduct a preliminary discussion and hold a straw poll on next year’s candidates. If substantial concerns surface in that meeting about your case, you want to wait and publish more. If you disregard warning lights and push ahead anyway, the risk of reputational damage is high. I’ve never seen one of those problematic cases go well.
It may take a couple of additional years to shed that bothersome “associate” from your title, but sailing through the promotion process unscathed is all worth it.