Stephen VasciannieTHE ACADEMIC pecking order rises to the level of professor and stops there. True, at some universities there is an attempt to have a higher academic level, namely that of Distinguished Professor, but this is not generally applicable. The concept of a distinguished professor is a tautology to those reared within the English tradition; for, by definition, the professor has distinguished herself or himself in order to become professor. But, perhaps the concept is viable in places such as at American universities where almost all academic titles incorporate the word 'professor', as in Assistant Professor, Associate Professor and so on.
Within the English tradition, and also in America, incentives are sometimes provided by virtue of location. In terms of status, the Regius Professor in a particular subject at Cambridge University very often represents the highest level of academic achievement in that subject in Britain. Similarly, at Oxford, the Chichele Professor of International Law is matched in terms of status only by the Whewell Professor at Cambridge, levels that are reflected not so much by salary, but by privileges and influence.
In Britain, therefore, a professor outside of Oxbridge will sometimes see movement to a chair at Oxbridge as a clear promotion even though his or her title remains that of professor.
PUBLICATIONS
At most universities, the fundamental requirement for elevation to professorship is that you must publish. The term 'publications' embraces a range of things, with the modernists growing increasingly enthusiastic about e-publishing and that kind of thing. But this should be an area in which good, old-fashioned, weather-beaten standards apply; and, consequently, far more weight should be attached to publications in respectable journals and in books, than to transitory outlets.
This is not to say, of course, that electronic journals are to be ignored. On the contrary, some electronic journals have the same status as their hard copy counterparts; my point is just that journalistic avenues and casual magazines are not to be counted in the same way as academic journals.
In different fields, there will be different methods of assessing publications. This is inevitable: methods of assessing professors of, say, surgery are apt to diverge from the methods of assessing lawyers. And, presumably for this reason much weight is attached to peer reviews in particular fields in assessing professorial appointments. In small universities, though, this comes with a catch: if your university does not have a large core group of experts in a given subject, your work will need to be assessed by outside experts, many of whom will have divergent expectations as to what rises to the level of professorial quality. Hence, the question of selecting professors is often characterised by charges of arbitrariness and bias.
EASY CHAIR
These thoughts came to me when I looked at the Times Higher Education supplement for December 17, 2004. The supplement reports that the proportion of professors at different English universities varies significantly from place to place, and that overall, the chance of being a professor at an English university is roughly one in ten. The question of whether it is becoming too easy for persons to become professors is explored at some length by the Supplement. On this point, there is, in fact, a fairly straightforward answer: persons should be made professors on the basis of publications, and with some reference to teaching skills. Never mind that they are good or bad administrators a professor is not necessarily an administrator; and never mind that they appear on television every week a professor may or may not have a big mouth.
Finally, I would add one point for clarity. There are times when an institution benefits from attracting stars to their ranks. If the star has not published regularly, but has a body of work that shows that he or she has been operating intellectually at the professorial level, then the university should accept that person with open arms.
Stephen Vasciannie is a
professor at the University
of the West Indies and a
consultant in the Attorney-General's chambers.
