Talk:Professor

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[edit] Archives

[edit] Emeriti or Emeritus?

Note that in the "Professor emeritus" subsection I changed Emeriti to Emeritus, since Emeriti redirects to Emeritus, and Emeriti is not mentioned in the Emeritus article. If the correct term is Emeriti, or it is an alternative term, my changes should be reverted and a description should be added to Emeritus. Labongo (talk) 16:24, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I think that the original was correct; it follows the typical Latin plurals. I recommend changing it back, but I agree that the form should be consistent across pages, so the "Emeritus" page should be fixed also. --UrsaLinguaBWD (talk) 06:14, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup

I added the "cleanup" tag to this article. In browsing it, it seemed to me that it is in serious need of a major overhaul. In particular, the sections on different countries and regions seem inconsistent and disorganized. Could someone add this to the "Academia" project page? I think it seriously hurts Wikipedia's reputation to have an article like this as such a bad example. Advice from any real professors, deans, etc. would be much appreciated. UrsaLinguaBWD (talk) 06:11, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Warwick

In 2006 the University of Warwick announced that it would be using the North American system in the future. Lecturers would become Assistant Professors, Senior Lecturers Associate Professor, and readers - who would be phased out - Associate Professor (Reader).

I've removed the above as it's uncited and is certainly not the case at present.

JiMternet (talk) 18:07, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Split page?

I've started taking a look and making some small edits to this page (mostly the USA section). In many of the academic-related pages, there are distinct differences between countries (see, e.g., Doctor of Philosophy), but for the most part, each country has only brief entries, keeping the pages at a manageable length. However, it seems that there is enough information on this page to split the article. I was thinking about starting a page on college faculty in the USA, and moving most of the USA section over there (keeping a few general summary paragraphs here). What does everyone think? -Nicktalk 21:03, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree completely. Though I think the bulk of the page should not be about differences in names/salaries, etc. from country to country--perhaps even "Regional differences among professorial titles" needs a separate page. If I went to an encyclopedia and looked up "Professor," I would expect to easily find, "what professors do" (esp. what makes them different from "teachers" in general), how they're trained (what one does to become a professor), the history of professors, and then only a bit on differences among professors today. I feel like the emphasis of this article is quite backwards, and it needs a strong editorial hand or hands (as most large WP articles need). -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 16:19, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Agreed. I think as well that if there is a split we should be sure that there is an article for Canada and the USA, as our systems are virtually the same. I find the stuff about salaries and politics of profs and all that to be not too relevant, though I have posted that here before and most seem to disagree with me. Dbrodbeck (talk) 17:26, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Slightly against: for now the amount of info is still manageable, and it is good to have all the comparisons in one place. Just excluding American section will make it less readable... On the other hand, I find the stuff about salaries and politics quite interesting (and, believe me, it is quite difficult to find elsewhere, unless you log into academic databases) Pundit|utter 22:25, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
I too find the salary and politics discussions interesting, but I think they range far afield. Note for instance that there is also an article, academic rank, which duplicates much of the country specific data in this article. I would suggest working with the editors of that article to see if we can consolidate duplicate information. I would think that this article would become a sort of portal for a set of articles on higher education teachers/researchers, including one on salary information. I don't feel too strongly about splitting, but I do feel strongly that the current article doesn't meet high standards of clarity. (Will it eventually have sections on "Salaries and Ranks of Professors in Afghanistan" "S & R of Professors in Andorra" ... "S & R of Professors in Zaire"? If so, will this still be a useful article for someone trying to get an overview of what a professor is and how she is different from a teacher?) -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 17:29, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
I guess, if we have more information on salaries specifically, we can make a table. Academic rank is wider than just the professor, as it includes the whole variety of lecturers, senior lecturers, postdocs, etc. Some overlap is not bad in itself, I guess... Pundit|utter 18:11, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
I think the idea of making a table is wonderful. I've seen several long articles that break up monotonous comparative information into an easily-referenced table. For a good example, see Comparison of office suites. Although academia is more subtle and complicated than computing, one could reduce some of the comparative data into scannable blurbs. Perhaps the first part of the current article could be kept and further developed with more information like a history of the profession, notable professors of the past, and perhaps even some pictures. Then, a new article could be created with a title like "Comparison of Professors by Country and Region" or something like that. This article still has a long way to go, but it is good to know that people are working on it.--UrsaLinguaBWD (talk) 06:09, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
Actually, since so much of the info is specific to the U.S., I've created the article Professors in the United States. I've encoutered the same problem on other articles where a lot of U.S. specific info shows up; in those cases adding a "in the United States" helps keep the general article adequately short w/o losing any info. Signaturebrendel 01:27, 21 May 2008 (UTC)