Professors vs Doctors: Questions Answered

[SUDOnym]

Some of my lecturers are Doctors and some are Professors - so one lecturer might be called Dr. Jack Johnson and another might be Prof. John Jackson ... I have a few questions related to this:

What must someone do to earn title of Professor?
Is Professor better than Doctor?
Do Professors also have Doctorates?

Cheers!

 

[Hootenanny]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_ranks

 

[D H]

Thread moved to General Discussions.

 

[Borek]

I have a feeling it was discussed in the past, search the forum. There is no single answer, as it is country dependent.

 

[jtbell]

I have a feeling it was discussed in the past, search the forum.

Yes, the question came up recently, but finding it in a search is tricky because it's buried in a thread about the TV show "The Big Bang Theory."

https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=3393265#post3393265

I remembered posting a response, so I searched my old posts in this forum for the word "professor."

To summarize: "Doctor" means the person has an academic degree such as Ph.D. or M.D. "Professor" is the title of a academic job (position) which usually requires the holder to have a Ph.D. or similar academic degree. When someone is both a "Doctor" and a "Professor", what you call him when you talk to him depends on local custom.

 

[Borek]

"Professor" is the title of a academic job (position) which usually requires the holder to have a Ph.D. or similar academic degree.

Depends on the academic system. In Poland (and I think in Germany, perhaps somewhere else as well) professor is either an academic degree or position.

 

[jtbell]

So, a person can be a professor without being employed by a particular university or other institution?

 

[Borek]

So, a person can be a professor without being employed by a particular university or other institution?

Yes.

One is being nominated as a professor (academic degree) by the President of Poland. As president resides in Belweder they are informally known as "belwederian professors" (? - "profesor belwederski" in Polish).

 

[cepheid]

I think an important point that hasn't been made yet here is that getting a doctorate is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for becoming a professor. It depends on the field, but typically when you graduate with your PhD, you don't immediately get hired for a faculty-level position (i.e. professor). So, as a PhD-bearer, you have the right to be to referred to by the title of "Dr.", but you haven't yet been deemed awesome enough to get a faculty job. This, at least, is how it works in North America. Instead, you're (hopefully) hired into a position as a researcher to continue to do work in your field. Many of these post-doctoral researchers are referred to as, appropriately enough, post-doctoral researchers or "postdocs" for sure. Postdocs are "Drs." but not "professors." In my field, it is necessary to go through one or two post-doctoral positions in which your only job is to do research/science (i.e. you have little to no administrative or teaching responsibilities). You just publish like crazy and try to make a name for yourself in your field in the hopes that you will get hired in some tenure-track position eventually, e.g. assistant professor. However, this is far from guaranteed.

Disclaimer: I'm just a lowly PhD student and can only go by what others have told me about the academic career path post-PhD. I'm not speaking from personal experience.