U.S. Academic Ranks Explained

By Paa-Kwesi Heto

The debate around Ghana’s Deputy Minister for Health’s use of the title “Prof” has generated misleading or partially correct information on the use of academic ranks in the United States (U.S.). This article aims to provide a clear understanding of the nuances of academic ranks in the U.S. and introduce readers to the meaning of some of the qualifiers used in U.S. Higher Education (post-secondary education).

While the ranking system may vary across schools, the key points discussed here apply to most universities and colleges. Understanding these nuances can be particularly beneficial for people with the legitimate authority to resolve the issue.

I write this article with the full awareness that every country has the sovereign right to decide its academic ranks and sub-groupings. However, Ghanaian institutions and organizations, which have the power to set the rules, must be aware of the potential impact of their decision on Ghanaian professionals when they compete with their peers, both domestically and internationally.

This awareness is crucial to maintaining a fair and competitive academic environment.

For those who are reading this article to know what I think about the controversy, let me not leave you in suspense. Prof. Dr. Grace Ayensu-Danquah has earned the privilege to use the Prof title according to U.S. higher education practices.

More so, she gets to decide how she wants to celebrate her accomplishments. She worked hard to earn them. However, she ought to do so without creating the wrong impression.

Understanding U.S. Faculty Ranks: Structure and Significance

Now, let me quickly explain the faculty rankings that exist in the U.S. higher education system. Admittedly, all teachers at the university or college in the U.S. are called professors.

Beyond the platitudes, however, lies a complex system that determines how a faculty member gets paid, the amount of the compensation, the kind and value of employer-provided benefits, metrics for performance evaluation, job security, and prospects for future career progress.

The U.S. higher education system has four general faculty (teaching staff) ranks – instructor, lecturer, professor, and affiliated/secondary appointments. Under each rank, there are many groupings and levels (more on this later).

Among the ranks, professorial appointments are sought after the most because they could lead to tenure and faculty senate privileges, giving an individual job security, protected academic freedom, and the ability to have a say in decisions that could affect them.

Instructor
One of the untruths that I would like to dispel is that an Assistant Professor is the entry-level rank in the U.S. higher education system. It is not.

That honor belongs to the rank of instructor. A person appointed to this rank would have either recently completed their post-doctoral training, residency, doctorate, or most of the requirements for the doctorate or equivalent and has the potential to be an effective teacher.

It is possible to recruit someone into this rank with a master’s degree or equivalent, however.

There are instructors even in R1 universities (R1 is the highest tier of research universities in the U.S.). For instance, I worked as an Associate Instructor at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), a four-year R1 university.

With this appointment, I taught an introduction to international relations course with sole responsibility and final authority for the course content, work assignments, performance evaluations, and grading (Instructor-of-Record). It is the same level of responsibility and authority conferred on assistant, associate, or full professors when they teach a course.

Lecturer
A lesser-known but often used rank is that of a lecturer. Depending on the university, an individual can be a lecturer, senior lecturer, or master lecturer.

People recruited into this rank focus primarily on teaching undergraduate students for a stated term. They are often paid per course taught and lack job security compared to tenured faculty.

Most do research and publish, but it does not guarantee them continued employment. The lecturers I know chose this route for many reasons, including family responsibilities, a preference for teaching, and a desire to avoid the publish-or-perish culture of the professorial rank.

Professor
The three standard ranks are assistant, associate, and full professor. Higher education organizations confer this rank on distinguished and exceptional individuals who are recognized experts in a field.

Such an individual would exhibit commitment to serving the university community, mentoring, teaching, and scholarly or professional work of high caliber. The assistant prefix is the entry level of this rank, and a professor title without a prefix is the third level of this rank.

Usually, people earn full professorships when their university deems them to have attained a distinguished record of accomplishment that leads to an international or national reputation in their field. Attaining this rank does not have to be time-bound, but it often is.

Beyond a full professor, an individual can earn other prefixes, such as distinguished, named chair, or an appropriate appellation. That is why there are people called chancellor’s professor and the like.

Distinguished professors earn the title when they become highly regarded in their field and society, nationally or internationally.

It is worth mentioning that in two-year colleges, often called community or junior colleges, a master’s degree is the minimum requirement for attaining the professorial ranks. Likewise, universities head-hunt highly accomplished individuals and appoint them to any one of the professorial ranks, even if all they have is a bachelor’s degree.

The recruiting administrators often recruit these distinguished individuals into the professor of practice sub-group.

Affiliated/Secondary Appointments
This rank allows higher education organizations to formalize an association with a faculty member who is not on any one of the three ranks. The scholar-in-residence is a common title given to people serving in this rank.

There are many other creative titles. In each case, the contract between the parties will spell out the nature of the relationship and the duration.

Sub-groupings and levels: The role of qualifiers

Qualifiers indicate an individual’s group, level within a rank, or the special circumstances surrounding their appointment. University administrators or departments do append these qualifiers to all ranks.

Some of the qualifiers include adjunct, visiting, clinical, teaching, practice, research, and emeritus.

The adjunct qualifier is for people whose primary employment is not with the university. These are experts in a field appointed on a part-time or discontinuous basis to teach and advise students.

One can serve as an adjunct in all ranks and groupings within a rank. Assuming Prof. Dr. Grace Ayensu-Danquah attained the level of a full professor, the school would have identified her as an adjunct professor, not an adjunct assistant professor.

The qualifier “adjunct” does not indicate anything more than the nature of the relationship between the academic and the university. An adjunct professor could very well be a tenured professor.

An adjunct that is recruited on a discontinuous basis could be a full-time employee during the period of active employment.

In a similar vein, the visiting prefix identifies faculty members appointed to teach for a stated term, usually one year or less, and have appointments at other universities or colleges. An individual could be a visiting adjunct assistant professor, a visiting research assistant professor, a visiting clinical associate professor, or a visiting distinguished professor.

These are all markers that define the employment dynamics.

The reason they get appended to the ranks, instead of allowing them to be stand-alone, is that the ranks remain the root. The qualifiers provide clarity to all parties involved in a contractual obligation.

In conclusion, the professorial rank is not the only rank used in the U.S. higher education. The key difference between how Ghanaian and U.S. higher education organizations use these ranks is whether the hierarchy that exists between the ranks is overt or covert.

In Ghana, it is overt. There is a linear progression built into the ranks. To illustrate, one must be a lecturer and a senior lecturer before gaining promotion to the professorial rank.

In the U.S., this is not the case. While there is an implied hierarchy between the ranks, the U.S. system is polycentric and dynamic.

Being a lecturer is not a prerequisite for getting recruited into the professorial rank. They are two separate ranks, serving different functions.

Academics are recruited into these ranks directly, meaning they must meet the standards set for a rank before earning the title.

Paa-Kwesi Heto, Ph.D., is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Education and Societal Change at Soka University of America Graduate School and a Project Policy Analyst at the University of California, Irvine. He has been associated with a U.S. higher education organization for at least a decade. Moreover, all his graduate education, which comprises five master’s degrees and a doctorate, is from U.S. universities.