Academic ranks in the United States


Academic ranks in the United States are the titles, relative importance and power of professors, researchers, and administrative personnel held in academia.

Professorship

Most common hierarchy

For regular faculty, the descending hierarchy in most cases is:
Somewhat outside the regular hierarchy:
Traditionally, Assistant Professor has been the usual entry-level rank for faculty on the "tenure track", although this depends on the institution and the field. Then, promotion to the rank of Associate Professor and later Professor indicates that significant work has been done in research, teaching, community service, etc.; in some institutions the associate level indicates that a tenure-track professor has been granted tenure. It typically takes about six years or so to advance in rank. The time for advancement between associate to full professor is less rigid than for assistant to associate. Typically, failure to be promoted to associate professor from assistant results in termination following a 1-year appointment. Faculty can remain at associate level more or less indefinitely at most institutions even if they are not promoted further.
Traditionally for "professional" fields such as engineering, law, medicine, business, or management – and lately expanding to others – faculty types can also include Clinical Professor or Professor of Practice. These ranks are generally not tenure-track and emphasize professional practice knowledge & skills rather than scholarly research. Likewise for the less-common title of Teaching Professor, which is not limited to professional fields. Recently, some institutions have created separate tenure tracks for such positions, which may also be given other names such as "lecturer with security of employment".
Other faculty who are not on the tenure track in the U.S. are often classified as Lecturers or Instructors, who may teach full-time or have some administrative duties, but have no research obligations, which also come in various forms and may be either tenure-track or not. Both Lecturers and Instructors typically hold advanced graduate/professional degrees. The term "professor" as a common noun is often used for persons holding any kind of faculty position. In academic medicine, Instructor usually denotes someone who has completed residency, fellowship, or other post-doctoral training but who is not tenure-track faculty.
Any faculty title preceded with the qualifier "Adjunct" normally denotes part-time status. Adjunct faculty may have primary employment elsewhere, though in today's saturated academic market many doctorate-holders seek to earn a living from several adjunct jobs. At some institutions, the job title Part-time Lecturer is used instead.
Although "Professor" is often the highest rank attained by a senior faculty member, some institutions may offer a unique title to a senior faculty member whose research or publications have achieved wide recognition. This may be a "named professorship" or "named chair" – for example, the "John Doe Professor of Philosophy". Named chairs typically but not exclusively include a small discretionary fund from an endowment set aside for the recipient's use. Large research universities also offer a small fraction of tenured faculty the title of "Distinguished Professor", "Distinguished Teaching Professor", or "Distinguished Research Professor" to recognize outstanding contributions. Some universities have as their highest rank "University/Institute Professor"; such faculty members are not usually answerable to deans or department heads and may report directly to the university provost.
In research, faculty who direct a lab or research group may in certain research contexts be called Principal Investigator, or P.I., though this refers to their management role and is not usually thought of as an academic rank.
Excepting special ranks, academic rank is dependent upon the promotion process of each college or university. Thus, a tenured associate professor at one institution might accept a "lower" position at another university because of its connection to the "tenure track." In some cases, an assistant professor who accepts a position of similar rank at another university may negotiate "time towards tenure", which indicates a shorter required probationary period, usually in recognition of prior academic achievements.

Temporary faculty and special appointments

The ranks of Lecturer and Senior Lecturer are used at some American universities to denote permanent teaching positions with few or no research responsibilities.

Research personnel

and Research scientist positions are most often limited-term appointments for postdoctoral researchers. They are not usually regarded as faculty positions, but rather staff, although some teaching may be involved. A common list of such positions is as follows.
are known by various related terms and are typically graduate students who have varying levels of responsibility. A typical undergraduate class, for example, comprises lecture and small-group recitation/discussion sessions, with a faculty member giving the lecture, and TAs leading the small-group sessions; in other cases, the teaching of an entire class may be entrusted to a graduate student.

Ecclesiastical ranks

seminaries and churches often grant the titles Doctor of Divinity, Doctor of Metaphysics or Doctor of Religious Science, most commonly to meritorious clerics for an outstanding work or another achievement in the field of religious and biblical studies.

Other

At some universities, librarians have a rank structure parallel to that of tenure-track faculty. Some senior librarians, and often the head librarian, may have faculty or faculty-equivalent rank.

Administrative ranks

Officers of the corporation

America's system of higher education is highly variable, with each of the 50 states and the 6 non-state jurisdictions regulating its own public tertiary institutions, and with each private institution developing its own structure. In general, the terms "President" and "Chancellor" are interchangeable, including the vice presidents, associate and assistant vice presidents, and so on. The dominant paradigm is president, vice president, associate vice president, and assistant vice president.
Some university systems or multi-campus universities use both titles, with one title for the chief executive of the entire system and the other for the chief executives of each campus. Which title refers to which position can be highly variable from state to state or even within a state. In California, for example, the chief executive officer of the entire California State University system of 23 campuses is called "Chancellor" while the CEO of each individual campus is called "President" — thus, there is an officer called "Chancellor of the California State University", and there is the "President of San Francisco State University". In the University of California, by contrast, the terms are reversed — thus, there is the "President of the University of California", and below that person in the hierarchy is the "Chancellor of the University of California, Los Angeles", and so on.
The term 'Warden' is almost never used in the United States in an academic sense. Where it is used, it typically means "provost" or "dean".
Deans may head an individual college, school or faculty; or they may be deans of the student body, or a section of it ; or they may be deans of a particular functional unit ; or they may be deans of a particular campus, or of a particular building. In medical schools, departments may be divided into sections or divisions by subspecialty, each with its own section chief or division chief.