In the US, ‘Professor’ seems to refer to several classes of academic rank that are more junior ranks in the Australian system, where Professor denotes a full professor specifically. Are you aware of anyone who tried to assess the signalling benefit of cost of seeking a U.S professorship instead of a local academic position for career capital, authority or grants?
I am not aware of any such cases despite having been working in US and now UK academia for the past 20 years.
“Professor” in this sense tends to be a title of address rather than a job title: US students have learned that in most circumstances it is appropriate to refer to an instructor as Professor (whether assistant professor, associate professor or full professor.… or indeed in many cases even university teaching staff who do not have a PhD yet); in the UK this is only appropriate for full professors, and many still prefer to be addressed by first names.
Career capital, authority, grants: anyone who matters in the UK is likely to be aware of differences in job titles and the approximate mapping between them (ie UK lecturer = US assistant professor, UK reader = US associate prof, professor = professor). Grants: while biased toward established academics this is more about publications, other grants, profile and not the title itself.
Sometimes people use honorary appointments the way you suggest, though. I know of one person who got updated business cards to add “Honorary Professor, X University” once a meaningless honorary appointment (granting library access and little more) was approved.
I have also seen cases that could work in the opposite direction: UK lecturers who want to maintain a US profile sometimes qualify their job title for the US market, as in “Lecturer (US equivalent = assistant professor)”. This is because many US universities use “lecturer” as job title for adjunct teaching staff (lower status than appropriate).
In the US, ‘Professor’ seems to refer to several classes of academic rank that are more junior ranks in the Australian system, where Professor denotes a full professor specifically. Are you aware of anyone who tried to assess the signalling benefit of cost of seeking a U.S professorship instead of a local academic position for career capital, authority or grants?
I am not aware of any such cases despite having been working in US and now UK academia for the past 20 years.
“Professor” in this sense tends to be a title of address rather than a job title: US students have learned that in most circumstances it is appropriate to refer to an instructor as Professor (whether assistant professor, associate professor or full professor.… or indeed in many cases even university teaching staff who do not have a PhD yet); in the UK this is only appropriate for full professors, and many still prefer to be addressed by first names.
Career capital, authority, grants: anyone who matters in the UK is likely to be aware of differences in job titles and the approximate mapping between them (ie UK lecturer = US assistant professor, UK reader = US associate prof, professor = professor). Grants: while biased toward established academics this is more about publications, other grants, profile and not the title itself.
Sometimes people use honorary appointments the way you suggest, though. I know of one person who got updated business cards to add “Honorary Professor, X University” once a meaningless honorary appointment (granting library access and little more) was approved.
I have also seen cases that could work in the opposite direction: UK lecturers who want to maintain a US profile sometimes qualify their job title for the US market, as in “Lecturer (US equivalent = assistant professor)”. This is because many US universities use “lecturer” as job title for adjunct teaching staff (lower status than appropriate).
...and then, there are the Germans :-)