Abstract
Full-time teaching-focused faculty at research universities may hold alternative titles such as Assistant Teaching Professor, Instructor, or Lecturer. We manipulated the title of a fictitious faculty target to investigate how such titles are perceived. Student and lay respondents (N = 317) respected and liked all targets, and their ratings did not differ depending on title. Faculty respondents (N = 645) also liked and respected all the targets but predicted that Associate Teaching Professors, compared to Associate Professors, would be paid less and would be less likely to have tenure, hold the PhD, or be respected outside their university. Lecturer and Instructor titles were estimated to be even lower in status. We discuss what our data indicate about the status of teaching in academia.
Would it be better to hold the title “Associate Professor or “Associate Teaching Professor”? People outside academia can rarely describe what faculty titles mean; however, titles hold significant meaning for those participating in academic culture. Indeed, within many institutions, a teaching-tagged title may convey lower status. This study explored how titles are interpreted within academia and whether certain titles signal relatively low status at universities.
Most universities hire at least two types of full-time faculty. One, usually tenure-track, conducts research and teaches. The other, often nontenure-track, is (increasingly) hired to perform teaching, advising, or service activities (Baldwin & Chronister, 2001; Hollenshead, Waltman, August, Smith, & Bell, 2007). Research universities usually tag teaching faculty with alternative titles such as “Associate Teaching Professor,” “Lecturer,” or “Instructor.” They reserve untagged titles such as “Assistant Professor” and “Associate Professor” for tenure-track (TT; more research focused) faculty (Baldwin & Chronister, 2001; Bérubé & Ruth, 2015; Kezar, Depaola, & Scott, 2019; Kezar & Sam, 2010a).
Our study focused on what North American faculty, students, and laypeople infer about a faculty member when that person’s title contains a “teaching” oriented tag. Using an experimental survey methodology, respondents rated one of six hypothetical faculty members, estimating their salary, teaching load, hours worked per week, and probability of holding the PhD. We also examined people’s personal feelings toward the target. Our study, in part, reveals people’s awareness of how teaching is generally esteemed in the academy.
Study Context
Faculty models are changing at North American universities (Cummings & Finkelstein, 2012; Teichler, Arimoto, & Cummings, 2013). Many writers have addressed the increase in part-time or term-focused contractual (adjunct) teaching (American Association of University Professors [AAUP], 2014; Gappa & Leslie, 1993; Kezar & Maxey, 2016). However, our study concerned full-time teaching-focused faculty (TFF), whose role is primarily teaching. Although TFF work at all types of institutions, we focused on Research-1 (R1) universities, where nontenure-track faculty are most numerous (Shavers, 2000) and TFF lines are most developed (Baldwin & Chronister, 2001; Kezar & Sam, 2011; Rawn & Fox, 2017; Shavers, 2000). Role disparities between TFF and research faculty also seem most pronounced at R1s (Baldwin & Chronister, 2001; Bérubé & Ruth, 2015; Cassuto, 2017).
Full-time TFF vary on at least three dimensions: contract length, tenure status, and title. First, some TFF work on serial, annual contracts; others are multiyear. Second, being teaching-focused is correlated with being nontenure-track, albeit not perfectly. Although many TFF are nontenure-track (Baldwin & Chronister, 2001; Kezar & Sam, 2011), others can earn tenure or security of employment. Third, TFF hold a variety of titles. Title structures seem to be developed on specific campuses through local discussions and usually occur in series. For example, TFF can be titled Junior Lecturer, Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, and Principal Lecturer (University of Maryland Policy on Professional Track Faculty, 2014), or they may be called Assistant Teaching Professor, Associate Teaching Professor and Teaching Professor. Those with or without terminal degrees may hold the titles of Instructor or Lecturer (Penn State Policy HR21, Definition of Academic Ranks; see also Gluckman, 2017). In rare cases, such as at the University of Delaware, TFF titles are untagged (Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and Professor).
The variation in teaching-oriented titles reflects how models for faculty are changing (Cummings & Finkelstein, 2012; Teichler et al., 2013). Some scholars have analyzed how research, teaching, and service have increasingly been “unbundled,” or assigned to separate groups of specialized faculty (Kezar, Gehrke, & Maxey, 2014). Higher education scholars (e.g., Boyer, 1990; Boyer, Moser, Ream, & Braxton, 2016) have called on universities to recognize the scholarship inherent in teaching and to invest in full-time (rather than adjunct) teaching faculty (Kezar & Maxey, 2016).
TFF are rarely studied separately from research faculty in large-scale higher education surveys. However, one recent study (Rawn & Fox, 2017) reported that TFF at Canadian research universities personally valued their work and were engaged in a variety of professorial roles, including curriculum leadership as well as basic and pedagogical research. Indeed, TFF at R1 institutions look a lot like the “regular” faculty at baccalaureate and master’s universities.
In sum, a patchwork of faculty roles helps meet the research, teaching, and service missions on R1 campuses. In the midst of this dynamic, there is little uniformity in the titles that universities assign to TFF. This study investigates how people perceive faculty who have different titles. The study can tell us what people know about the status of teaching in the academy. It can also shed light on whether people’s personal feelings about TFF differ from their knowledge of how TFF are generally treated. Finally, by comparing perceptions of faculty and laypeople, our work can compare how TFF titles are perceived by different stakeholders.
Predictions
We predicted that faculty responses will reflect faculty members’ implicit knowledge that teaching-tagged titles are held in lower status than untagged professorial titles. Conventional wisdom in the academy suggests that research is more prestigious than teaching (Cassuto, 2017; Kezar & Sam, 2011; Thedwall, 2008), and tenure-track jobs are more prestigious than nontenure-track jobs usually associated with teaching. If we are correct, then adding a “teaching” tag to a faculty title should lead faculty to conclude that the person has a lower salary, is less likely to hold a terminal degree, and is less likely to be an active scholar. A teaching tag might lead faculty to estimate that the person is less respected, less satisfied with their job, and less proud of their job title. We tested both English and chemistry faculty targets to investigate whether teaching-tagged titles evoked the same responses across these two disciplines. In contrast to faculty knowledge of these norms, we predicted that undergraduates would not detect a difference based on the addition of a tag such as “teaching” or “instruction.” Perhaps because undergraduates encounter faculty primarily in their teaching roles, students assume that teaching is a professor’s primary activity (see Morling & Lee, 2020). A teaching tag is perceptually redundant for them. Indeed, a pilot study found that students and laypeople (N = 909) did not distinguish among six faculty titles (Morling & Lee, 2019).
Most of our study’s items addressed implicit knowledge—stereotype content knowledge—about how faculty are perceived in the academy. However, familiarity with stereotype content is not the same as private endorsement (Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002). For example, if a faculty participant in our sample estimates that a target with a teaching-tagged title collects a lower salary, it does not mean that the participant believes the person should do so. Therefore, although most of our items concerned assumptions about how the academy works, we also collected personal emotional reactions to the target. Our emotion items (liking, respect, pity, and envy) came from the Stereotype Content Model (SCM; Cuddy, Fiske, & Glick, 2007; Fiske et al., 2002), which finds that the content of stereotypes about social groups predicts distinct emotional reactions. Admired in-groups (e.g., middle-class people) are viewed as both warm and competent; they are the focus of liking and respect. Other out-groups are associated with mixed stereotypes. Some are high in warmth but low in competence (e.g., housewives, elderly people); these may engender pity. Others are high in competence but low in warmth (e.g., Asians, Jewish people, the rich), engendering envy. The emotion items were exploratory variables, used to test whether students and faculty would view faculty as members of an in-group (i.e., high in respect and liking; see Fiske & Dupree, 2014) or as members of an envied out-group (i.e., higher in envy). We also explored whether faculty might view teaching-titled targets with pity.
Method
Overview
A national sample of faculty members and a regional sample of college students rated two fictitious faculty targets online. One (the baseline) was a community college faculty member. The other (the main target) was a university faculty member. Participants were randomly assigned to one of six university faculty titles that varied on title (Associate Professor, Associate Teaching Professor, Lecturer, and Instructor) and discipline (English vs. Chemistry). We hypothesized that faculty (but not student) respondents would be aware of the status of teaching faculty and would thus rate the “Associate Professor” title as more likely to have tenure, earn more, be more satisfied in their jobs, and be more likely to publish scholarship, compared to “Associate Teaching Professor.” We expected that faculty with the “Instructor” and “Lecturer” titles would be assumed to be even less likely to have tenure, earn less, be less likely to have PhDs, less satisfied in their jobs, and less likely to publish scholarship compared to faculty with either of the professorial titles. Emotion-related variables were exploratory. The community college baseline target was a positive control—we should see meaningful differences between the two targets (e.g., in predicted teaching load) if participants were paying attention).
Participants and Power Analyses
In total, 645 faculty participated online. Faculty participants were recruited two ways. First, we strove for a representative sample through cluster sampling. Starting with a list of all Carnegie Universities, we randomly selected 33 institutions (after eliminating online-only colleges, business colleges, and for-profit universities, and those with an enrollment under 500 students). From the selected schools, we obtained e-mail addresses of all members of three target departments (Psychology, Biological Sciences, and English) and invited them to participate. We sent 1,784 invitations; of this set, 255 (14%) opened the survey and 198 (11%) completed it. The second sample was solicited through teaching-related mailing lists in Psychology, Biological Sciences, and English/Writing. From this sample, 550 people opened the survey and 447 completed it (because we don’t know the populations of each mailing list, we cannot estimate the response rate).
Students came from the General Psychology subject pool at the University of Delaware. In partial fulfillment of a course requirement, 335 students were selected at random from the pool and invited to participate in the survey online; 316 (94%) of them completed the survey, half in fall and half in spring semesters. Key characteristics of both samples are presented in Table 1. 1
Characteristics of the Samples.
Sample size was determined by the number of faculty completing the online survey and the number of undergraduate participant hours allocated to the authors. The faculty sample of 645 had 80% power to detect a small effect size of f = .11, and the student sample of 316 had 80% power to detect f = .16.
Design
This was a 2 × 2 + 2 independent groups experimental design. The 2 × 2 was a factorial created by crossing title (Associate Professor vs. Associate Teaching Professor) with discipline (Chemistry vs. English). The two additional cells were Chemistry Lecturer and Chemistry Instructor (we did not test English Lecturer or English Instructor). Participants were randomly assigned to read one of the six profiles.
Materials
Target profiles
Participants rated two targets. All participants rated the same first target, “Milan Bates,” an Associate Professor of Biological and Life Sciences at the fictional Rockton Community College. Then, participants read one of the six faculty targets, described as “Jamie Watson” at the fictional Montrose University (see Figure 1). Participants answered the following questions about both targets.
Sample profile used as one of the stimuli the study. Some participants saw “Department of Chemistry.” Alternative titles included Associate Professor, Lecturer, and Instructor. See text for the complete design.
Demographic estimates
We asked participants to estimate what kind of institution the target worked for, with options ranging from “Community College” to “Doctoral University.” They estimated base salary, age, October and July work hours (all by typing numbers), and rated prestige of the school on a 7-point scale with 7 = most prestigious.
We also asked people to estimate the target’s teaching load (between 1 and 4 courses per semester), rate the likelihood that the “person holds the PhD in their area of expertise” on a 0–100 scale with higher scores indicating greater likelihood, and rate whether they thought the person had tenure at their institution on a 1 (definitely not), 4 (neutral/not sure), to 7 (yes, definitely) scale.
Participants rated several job-relevant items from 1 (definitely not), 4 (neutral), to 7 (yes, definitely), including estimates of the person’s teaching evaluations, daily contact with undergraduates, respect from colleagues both inside and outside the university, whether the person has published scholarship in the last 5 years, feels proud of his or her title, would rather be working at a different university, and has children.
Participants answered four emotion items: “I respect this person,” “I like this person,” “I envy this person,” and “I feel sorry for this person” on scales from 1 (definitely not), 4 (neutral), to 7 (yes, definitely).
For the student sample only, we added several questions to explore students’ familiarity with academic culture, including their definitions of tenure, and their expectations for the amount of time faculty should spend on teaching, research, and service. These items are described in Morling and Lee (2020).
Procedure
All materials were presented online. After providing informed consent, participants first rated the Community College Associate Professor, then rated their randomly assigned university faculty member, followed by demographic questions.
Results
Analytic Strategy
We used a series of between-subjects analysis of variances (ANOVAs). First, we used a 2 (title) × 2 (discipline) ANOVA to test main effects and interactions of the core 2 × 2 design, conducting the analyses separately in the two sample for simplicity of presentation. We added the third factor (sample) to test (via significant three-way interactions) whether patterns observed in the faculty sample were significantly different from those in the undergraduate sample. These analyses are reported after the relevant faculty results. For example, if there was a main effect for title in the faculty sample, we report it, followed by whether the title effect interacted with sample.
Next, we used a one-way ANOVA with six groups to compare the Instructor and Lecturer conditions to the other four, using post hoc analyses to note significant differences. Because we expected differences but did not always predict their direction, we used the conservative Scheffé test for post hoc comparisons. Error terms were calculated from the one-way ANOVAs. Because of occasional missing data, the error df fluctuates. Means for all dependent variables are presented in Tables 2 –4.
Results for Work-Related Dependent Variables for Faculty Sample (Shaded rows) and Student Sample (Unshaded rows).
Note. Shaded rows: faculty sample, N = 640–709; unshaded rows: student sample; N = 311–316. Within faculty sample (shaded) rows, means with different superscripts are significantly different according to Scheffé test post hoc tests using MSError from one-way analysis of variance. Within the student sample, no means were statistically significantly different according to Scheffé post hoc tests.
1Type of university: R1 = Doctoral university; MS = Master’s university; BC = 4-year Baccalaureate university; SLA = Small Liberal Arts College; CC = Community college. Percentages may not add to 100% because of rounding and “Other” option.
Results for Impression-Related Dependent Variables.
Note. All variables rated on a 7-point scale where 7 = very likely (shaded rows: faculty sample, N = 640–709; unshaded rows: student sample, N = 311–316). Within faculty sample rows, means with different superscripts are significantly different according to Scheffé test post hoc tests using MSError from one-way analysis of variance. Within the student sample, no means were statistically significantly different according to Scheffé post hoc tests.
Stereotype Content Model Emotions.
Note. All variables rated on a 7-point scale where 7 = very much (shaded rows: faculty sample, N = 640–709; unshaded rows: student sample, N = 311–316). Means with * are significantly different from the midpoint (4.0) at p < .002 (the Bonferonni-correction for 24 comparisons where α = .05, two-tailed).
Student Perceptions of Associate Professors and Associate Teaching Professors
Student ratings of the target professor did not significantly differ by discipline or title. The 2 × 2 ANOVAs returned only one significant main effect for discipline, one main effect for title, and no significant interactions. Chemistry faculty were estimated to teach more than English faculty, F(1, 207) = 4.22, p = .041, d = 0.28, 95% CI [0.01, 0.55]; and Associate Professors were assumed to teach more than Teaching Associate Professors F(1, 207) = 4.39, p = .037, d = 0.28, 95% CI [0.05, 0.51]. Given that we analyzed 25 dependent variables, these results could be Type I errors.
Faculty Perceptions of Associate Professors and Associate Teaching Professors
Overall, faculty responses confirmed the hypothesis that faculty perceive professorial ranks differently based on both title and discipline.
Main effects of title
The 2 × 2 analyses showed that faculty rated targets with “teaching” in their titles differently. That is, there were several main effects for Title with moderate to large effect sizes that were not modified by an interaction with discipline. Faculty estimated that Teaching Associate Professors: had higher teaching loads than Associate Professors, F(1, 438) = 93.23, p < .001, d = 0.92, 95% CI [0.72, 1.11]; were younger in age, F(1, 429) = 15.60, p < .001, d = −0.38, 95% CI [−0.57, −0.19]; earned lower salaries, F(1, 436) = 84.51, p < .001, d = −0.87, 95%CI [−1.06, −0.67] (Figure 2); and were less likely to have a Ph.D., F(1, 429) = 57.40, p < .001, d = −0.73, 95% CI [−0.92, −0.53]. 2
Estimated salaries (left axis, bars) and PhD likelihood (%, right axis, line) of the seven faculty targets (Faculty respondents only). For significance tests, see Table 2. Error bars represent standard errors.
In addition, while faculty were fairly certain that “Associate Professors” had tenure (Ms for English and chemistry were 6.87 and 6.93 on the 7-point scale), they were uncertain whether “Teaching Associate Professors” did (Ms were 4.03 and 4.26, near the scale midpoint), F(1, 432) = 232.57, p < .001, d = 1.50, 95% CI [1.25, 1.67]. (And for comparison, Chemistry Lecturers and Instructors were judged unlikely to have tenure, Ms were 1.73 and 1.83; see Figure 3).
Associate Teaching Professors were judged to feel less proud of their job title when compared to Associate Professors, F(1, 431) = 21.81, p < .001, d = −0.44, 95% CI [−0.63, −0.25], and were perceived as less respected by colleagues outside the university, F(1, 431) = 71.74, p < .001, d = −0.81, 95% CI [−1.01, −0.62].
Associate Teaching Professors were judged to be more likely to have children, F(1, 429) = 14.19, p < .001, d = 0.36, 95% CI [0.17, 0.55], perhaps because teaching careers are seen as more family-friendly.
Overall, 68% of the respondents assumed the target worked at a Masters’ or Doctoral-granting university, but when the faculty member was an Associate Teaching Professor, they were more likely to assume the university was Doctoral rather than Master’s granting, χ2(3) = 15.49, p = .001. This perception mirrors the reality that Doctoral universities employ TFF more than other campuses.
A surprising result was that the Associate Professors were estimated to wish to work at a different university more so than Associate Teaching Professors, F(1, 429) = 65.49, p < .001, d = 0.77, 95% CI [0.58, 0.97].
In contrast to these many differences, faculty with “teaching” in their title were not perceived to work fewer hours in October or July, F(1, 433) = 0.44; p = .51, d = 0.06, 95% CI [−0.12, 0.25]; F(1, 433) = 1.25; p = .26, d = 0.11, 95% CI [−0.08, 0.30], and their universities were not rated as more prestigious, F(1, 430) = 1.70; p = .19, d = 0.13, 95% CI [0.06, 0.32].
Title × Sample Tests
All of the above effects significantly interacted with sample (faculty vs. student; all ps < .025), supporting the argument that faculty, but not students, inferred differences in the faculty targets based on title. There was one exception; the Title × Sample interaction was n.s. for age (p = .30).
Main Effects of Discipline (English Versus Chemistry)
We found four main effects for discipline that were not modified by interactions. Chemistry faculty were judged to have higher teaching loads (d = 0.25, 95% CI [0.07, 0.44]), be more likely to have a PhD (d = 0.23, 95% CI [0.04, 0.42]), get lower teaching evaluations (d = −0.35, 95% CI [−0.54, −0.16]), and be less likely to have children (d = −0.29, 95% CI [−0.48, −0.10]), compared to English faculty, Fs(1, 429–438) = 5.83 to 13.19, ps < .02.
Discipline × Sample Tests
The teaching load (p = .001) and teaching evaluations (p = .003) variables significantly interacted with sample in follow-up analyses (p = .001), whereas having a PhD (p = .10), and having children (p = .18) did not.
Faculty Perceptions of Lecturers and Instructors
According to the one-way ANOVAs (post hoc statistics reported in Tables 2 and 3), the Chemistry Lecturer and Chemistry Instructor were estimated by faculty to be significantly younger, draw a lower salary, be less likely to hold a PhD, and be unlikely to have tenure, compared to the four other Professorial titles. These faculty were seen as less respected outside their universities, and though respected internally, they were seen as less liked by colleagues (see Table 3 means and mean comparisons). Curiously, they were assumed to be less likely to have daily contact with undergraduates. The Instructor and Lecturer were perceived to be more likely to read academic journals weekly and equally likely to have published scholarship compared to the Associate Professors. They were judged to be less likely to wish to work elsewhere.
Instructors and Lecturers were not rated significantly different from each other with one exception: Faculty respondents assumed that Lecturers were more likely to have a PhD than Instructors (71.4% vs. 58.3%).
One way to interpret the pattern could be that faculty assumed the Instructor or Lecturer titles described a graduate student. Such an explanation could account for the lower age and salary, less daily contact with undergraduates and high rates of reading journals and publishing scholarship (presumably because graduate students are at work on research). However, the graduate student explanation is not consistent with the high teaching load (4-3) that faculty assumed for these titles.
Title × Sample Tests
In all cases, the Title × Sample interactions were statistically significant (ps < .001) with the exception of publishing scholarship (p = .24).
Faculty Position Moderators
Did faculty respondents’ own tenure status or own title affect their responses to the six targets? To find out, we ran a series of moderator analyses. In general, these participant variables did not moderate the results. 3
Stereotype Content Model Emotion Ratings (Exploratory)
We compared ratings for liking, respect, envy, and pity to the midpoint of the scale (i.e., 4.0), correcting for multiple comparisons (using p < .002). We found that students generally liked and respected university faculty; they did not envy or feel sorry for them (see Table 4). The pattern was the same for the community college professor. This result matches Fiske and Dupree (2014), who reported that Americans categorized Professors as an admired group, along with nurses, doctors, and teachers.
Faculty responses (see Table 4) were more complex. Faculty rated community college professors and English Associate Teaching Professors as higher than the midpoint in respect and liking, and lower in envy and pity. They rated the other five faculty targets higher than the midpoint on respect, liking, and envy and lower only in pity. Interpreting the pattern through the lens of the SCM suggests that faculty viewed all the other targets as an admired but perhaps envied group.
The emotion ratings were the only dependent variables for which people rated their personal feelings toward the target. We suggest that whereas faculty assumed that targets with teaching-oriented titles would be treated differently by others the academy, they did not generally feel personally negative toward these potential colleagues.
Summary
In general, students did not discriminate among six faculty titles. In contrast, faculty respondents’ ratings showed their knowledge of the conventional wisdom surrounding teaching in the academy. Not surprisingly, faculty targets with “Teaching” in their titles were assumed to have higher teaching loads than Associate Professors. But Associate Teaching Professors were also assumed to be in lower status jobs. They were assumed to receive less respect outside their institution, get lower pay, be younger, be less likely to have a PhD, be less proud of their job title, and lack tenure. The pattern for Instructors and Lecturers was similar, but they tended to be rated even lower on salary, PhD likelihood, age, and tenure than Associate Teaching Professors. Even though our faculty respondents are aware of the lower status of teaching faculty, their personal feelings suggest they like, respect, and even envy them.
Discussion
We manipulated the titles of fictional targets to find out what people assume about the status of TFF. As expected, we found that students did not perceive fictional university faculty members differently based on job title, suggesting that for them, the wording of a professorial title has little meaning. This result reflects, we think, a general lack of awareness about faculty work among R1 undergraduates (see Morling & Lee, 2020). In contrast, faculty members perceived differences. When a fictional faculty target was described as an “Associate Teaching Professor” compared to an “Associate Professor,” faculty assumed that the person taught more but was lower status: They earned less, were younger, were less likely to have a PhD, and were less likely to have tenure. Teaching-tagged professors were also seen as less respected outside the university and less proud of their job titles.
The news was not all bad for TFF. Faculty respondents predicted all titles would be about equally respected and liked by colleagues inside their university, and respondents’ personal feelings for these imaginary targets also indicated liking and respect, and even envy—suggesting that faculty are viewed as an admired in-group (liking and respect) or an envied out-group (respect and envy). Most of the targets were said to read journals and publish scholarship. In this respect, our respondents seem aware that TFF perform work beyond teaching (see Rawn & Fox, 2017, Table 2). Despite their lower status, people did not report feeling sorry for the teaching-tagged faculty.
Our experimental approach is novel and powerful. By keeping all features constant except title and randomly assigning participants, we can be certain that it was the titles, not any other factor, that caused different ratings.
Our sample of undergraduates was not particularly large, so the null effects we found for this sample could be Type II errors. However, our confidence is bolstered by a pilot study, in which a much larger sample of students and MTurk workers (combined N = 909) were randomly assigned to six faculty titles. We observed almost no significant differences in their perceptions in this high-powered study (Morling & Lee, 2019; see OSF page for details https://osf.io/ptvg4/). Because we recruited a large sample of faculty, the effect is more accurately estimated and more likely to be replicable (Fraley & Vazire, 2014).
To what extent can our results generalize? We are fairly confident that our faculty results do represent North American faculty fairly well, in part because one third of the faculty were selected randomly (via cluster sampling) and in part because we did not notice any systematic differences in response across faculty respondents’ own tenure status, title, or discipline. Students at more elite universities than ours might be better versed in professorial titles; a future study could test this question.
Our target worked at a fictional university, so it is unclear whether we would see the same patterns if our targets had been employed at a real institution with a known reputation. We also did not test other possible titles such as Adjunct Professor, Clinical Professor, or Senior Lecturer. In addition, we tested only English and chemistry as disciplines. The “teaching” tag affected both disciplines similarly when it came to most variables. However, Associate Teaching Professors of English (perhaps because of their presumed grading burden) were assumed to be less active scholars, higher rated teachers, and less respected by colleagues. Like the community college target, English Associate Teaching Professors were the only target not envied by our faculty respondents. Therefore, faculty title effects might vary slightly across discipline.
Applications for the Academy
This study might inform discussions on university campuses about what to call TFF. For example, many universities require PhDs of TFF, but our data suggest that teaching-tagged titles do not advertise this qualification very well. Even Associate Teaching Professors are assumed to be less likely to hold the PhD compared to plain old Associate Professors, with Lecturers and Instructors next. In fact, our results indicate that universities who use the title “Instructor” for faculty with PhDs (as some do) are greatly misrepresenting the advanced training of their faculty.
Another application of our work is that faculty titles don’t mean much to students. Indeed, student patterns indicate that students already see faculty as “teachers” more than researchers, so tagged titles might not add new information. Students’ assumption that faculty are primarily “teachers” might raise their expectations for how effective faculty should be in the classroom, a topic for a second paper on our data (Morling & Lee, 2020).
Our data suggest that faculty believe that teaching-tagged faculty are considered to have lower status. Is their knowledge of the conventional wisdom actually mirrored in reality? For salary, yes: Faculty estimated that teaching-tagged faculty salaries were about 16% lower than Associate Professors, and one study found that full-time, nontenure-track faculty earned 18–26% less than full-time tenure track faculty (Monks, 2004). Studies of faculty teaching load, work hours, and publication rate often do not separate faculty by their title, making it hard to tell whether our faculty respondents were accurate about the other variables they rated.
Our results do not indicate a strong personal bias against teaching faculty. Faculty respondents seemed to personally admire or envy teaching faculty, even as they acknowledged these same targets are in lower status jobs. The respect accorded from internal colleagues parallels the finding that full-time nontenure-track faculty felt just as committed to, and satisfied with, their jobs as tenure-track faculty (Ott & Cisneros, 2015).
The Status of Teaching in the Future
Language and meanings change over time. Our data were collected during 2014–2016, a time of great interest in new models for faculty work (Kezar & Maxey, 2016). Anecdotally, universities seem to be conducting national searches for TFF and may even recruit scholarly teachers with strong reputations. A vibrant, scholarly teaching culture, including conferences and journals that feature scholarship of teaching and learning, should increase the status of teaching. As universities recruit, develop, and promote the best teachers, it seems possible that perceptions of teaching-tagged titles will follow suit. Optimistically, perhaps one day at a scholarly conference, a professor will boast of their new teaching-tagged title to colleagues. But for now, teaching-tagged titles appear to signal lower pay, lack of tenure, and less pride.
It is notable that although tenure-track titles are the same at all universities, the title structures of TFF are extremely variable. Each university with TFF adopts its own local titling structure for them. It’s possible that these idiosyncratic solutions, themselves, signal a lack of investment in TFF positions. And indeed, at research universities, TFF face strong headwinds in their efforts to secure faculty governance, long-term contracts, and equal pay (e.g., Baldwin & Chronister, 2001; Bérubé & Ruth, 2015; Kezar & Sam, 2010b). However, full-time TFF positions benefit undergraduate education and provide a viable academic career path for teacher-scholars. If TFF had a standard titling structure across campuses, especially if combined with high standards for hiring and promotion of such faculty, it would likely contribute to higher perceived status for TFF.
Conclusion
Higher education scholars acknowledge a “mosaic of talent” and propose “diversity with dignity” as a model for scholarship that includes scholarly teaching (Boyer, 1990; Boyer et al., 2016). Nevertheless, the faculty in our study generally believed that teaching-tagged faculty would actually be lower in status at a fictional university. We believe the conventional wisdom can potentially change but only if universities develop models in which full-time teaching-focused faculty are conspicuously granted academic freedom, opportunities for scholarship, and clear and rigorous expectations (Kezar & Maxey, 2016; Kezar et al., 2019). In such a future, teaching-tagged titles will come to signal the same status as “traditional” tenure-track faculty.
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful to Dr. Christine Cucciarre and Dr. Mary Pat Wenderoth for help with recruitment to faculty mailing lists. They thank Bhargavi Janaki and Xiaxin Zhong for help with data preparation. They thank Dr. Adrianna Kezar for comments on an earlier version of the article and Dr. Kevin Guidry and Dr. Catherine Rawn for help with background literature.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.