Speaker 1: Hi everyone, so this week I'm going to try to make something that I think is pretty complicated, less complicated, but I may fail miserably. So let's see how we go. Something that's come up in the comments quite a few times is can we chat about the different labels that we use at university. So if somebody is a doctor, somebody is a professor, somebody is an electorate, how do these terms fit together? Do they mean the same thing? Basically, how does it all work? So universities, depending on where they are, their country that they're based in, how they want to operate, which model they want to use, we all use, well, we don't all use, we use different terms basically depending on where we are. So let's start off with, I think, kind of the doctor versus prof. So let's say you've got a person in your department, let's go with Smith, Dr. Smith versus Professor Smith. What is the difference? Okay, so the doctor title, you get a doctorate when you've done your PhD. So this is an academic form of study. It is a awarded degree qualification. It's the highest kind of awarded one you can get at your university level. But a PhD, so when you get your PhD and you can use the word doctor in front of your name, that means that you've got an academic qualification. It gets a little bit complicated when you start looking at the difference between medical doctors and doctorates in other subjects. There's a lot of debate about whether you should put the doctor at the start, so Dr. CST. Should I put CST PhD and not have the doctorate at the start? Should I be Dr. CST PhD? But does that imply that I've got two academic qualifications, not one? So that's a whole different subject. So let's just say that a doctorate, when you get your DR in front of your name, that is because you've got an academic qualification. Now, if you've got prof in front of your name, that's actually not an academic qualification. That is a university recognised academic rank. So if a person working at university calls themselves a professor, that means that the university has recognised them to be of a certain academic level within the institution. So a doctorate, a PhD is a qualification, whilst using prof or professor in front of your name is an academic level within that institution. And so professors, when they have the prof in front of their name, most likely they're also going to hold a doctorate. So you might see professor, then their name, and then maybe PhD afterwards, but quite often they'll omit it. So yeah, that is the first distinction. We need to remember that a DR, a doctorate, at the start of somebody's name is different to a prof, and it's not just in terms of levels, they're actually different things. One's the qualification and one is a university recognised academic level. I'm not sure this video's got off to a great start. I think we have made it confusing. Well, I've made it confusing already, but let's keep going. Okay, so another big thing that we probably should talk about is the difference between being a lecturer and being a professor. I, in the UK, at the university I work for, I'm a lecturer. But if you were to take my job and plant me in another university, probably one in the US, I would actually be called an assistant professor. So lecturer, the term lecturer, is kind of analogous, analogous. How do you say that? Analogous. Wait a second. It's the same, equivalent in rank to an assistant professor in the US. So some UK universities will use the professor terms as well. So some of my colleagues and friends working at other universities here in the UK, they are also lecturers, but they are called assistant professors because their universities adopted that naming scheme instead. But essentially, a lecturer is the same thing as an assistant professor, at least if you're comparing the UK and the US way of labelling things. So what does that mean then in terms of a UK professor? So this is where we need to understand a little bit the UK academic levels and the US academic levels. I've made a video on this before, but let's just recap it again. So the UK academic levels, traditionally it would go lecturer, senior lecturer, reader, professor. So that's typically your career path when you start as a lecturer and you work your way up. Now, if I was in the US, I'd probably be looking at having assistant professor, associate professor, and then full professor. So that's my academic levels. And roughly a UK lecturer is the same as a US assistant professor. Then it gets a little bit confusing. So the US associate professor, people kind of debate whether that's equivalent to a senior lecturer or a reader. Some are kind of in between those two roles. And then quite often people will say, well, then a UK professor is the same as a US full professor. And yes, we can draw that comparison. But again, it can be a little bit more confusing than that because not everybody in the UK system will reach becoming a professor. You know, some of us will become senior lecturers, some of us may become readers, but not everyone is going to become a professor. So in the US, quite a lot of academics who want to remain in academia will be endeavouring and making it to a full professor. So some people say, actually, we shouldn't compare the UK professor and the US professor exactly. And instead, we should maybe start looking at things like US chairs and saying, well, maybe the chair position is sort of similar to the UK professor position. But American systems and the chair system is not something I know much about. There's different types of chair you can be when you're a professor, and I don't really know much about that. So in my head, at least, I'm a lecturer, and that's the same as being an assistant professor if I were in the US. As I said, you know, it's not the easiest system to understand. If you go on the internet, you can see all the different countries and the way they choose to label their academic levels. But I think what it comes down to is if you're a lecturer here in the UK, if you're an assistant professor here in the UK, if you are a lecturer or assistant professor somewhere else around the world, most likely your job is going to involve teaching students. So that could be teaching undergraduate students and master's students and leading a body of research work. So having an active research profile and looking after research streams and projects completed by yourself and also your PhD and your student team that hopefully you're growing around you. Yeah. Oh, it's so tricky, isn't it? Trying to explain the academic levels. Just to throw in one final thing, I'm going to throw out the word dean. So a dean, at least here in the UK, a dean isn't a academic level within the institution. So it's not like I'm going to go lecturer, senior lecturer, reader, professor, and then, oh, I'll become a dean at the end. A dean is a position within the university. And so typically, a dean is going to have administration and managerial responsibilities for a faculty. They'll be looking at the hiring, the strategic direction of travel for that faculty. Quite often, your university deans are going to have an academic background. So quite often, they're going to be professors. They may well have been past heads of department. But yeah, if you see the term dean around, at least here in the UK, that is a position within the university. And so the person who is a dean may also be a professor. So they may have a prof in front of their name. They will most likely also hold a doctorate. They'll have a PhD. And yeah. I've also only really discussed the lecturer and the equivalent professor routes. I've not really touched in this video about the teaching fellow route or the research fellow route. I have made a couple of past videos where I've chatted about them. I'll include a couple of links now, or I'll put the links in the description bit below. But maybe we should revisit those as well, because being a teaching fellow or being a research fellow are also really interesting really interesting career pathways that you can take within the university. I really hope that this video hasn't made a slightly confusing situation more confusing. I hope this has helped in some way. But do let me know wherever you are in the world, you know, which what do you call yourself in terms of your academic rank at your university? Do you think things differently to how we do them in the UK? Do you do things in a similar way with a similar academic levels? Let me know in the comments. I'm here every Monday. I'll be back next week with another academic related video. So if uni life and academic life is of interest to you, please do hit like, please do hit subscribe. Leave me a comment. I love reading the comments. I'm Caroline, and I'll see you next Monday. Bye.