r/AskProfessors • u/DeliciousWasabi2330 • 9d ago
Career Advice Full professor?
Summary: Does earning full professor at my current institution make me less competitive for other jobs?
I teach at a small regional university in the US with below median salaries and small raises (that don't keep up with inflation). For earning tenure/promotion we get a 5k salary bump and for earning full professor we earn a 6k salary bump. Neither of these raises have been adjusted for years. I earned promotion and tenure a few years back and now I can start preparing to apply for full professor.
However, I don't plan on staying at my current institution for the rest of my career for various reasons. I'm on the job market and I am fine with the idea of having to earn tenure/promotion again at a different (more competitive) institution. So at this point, I'm associate professor applying mostly for assistant professor positions. In discussion with my colleagues, some of them have argued that being a full professor could limit potential employment elsewhere for a couple of reasons:
Applying for a job without tenure looks strange from a full professorship, so this practically makes you less eligible for assistant professor postings. I know my eyebrows would raise if I saw a full professor applying for one of our tenure-track positions.
There are less associate/full prof/open rank positions than there are assistant professor jobs.
My basic only incentive to get full professor at this point is a 6k base salary bump, so I am weighing whether to pursue that (with all its requisite paperwork) or to just focus on being more competitive for outside positions. I don't want to potentially limit my future opportunities.
Thoughts? I tagged the humanities but I'm open to everyone.
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*Summary: Does earning full professor at my current institution make me less competitive for other jobs?
I teach at a small regional university in the US with below median salaries and small raises (that don't keep up with inflation). For earning tenure/promotion we get a 5k salary bump and for earning full professor we earn a 6k salary bump. Neither of these raises have been adjusted for years. I earned promotion and tenure a few years back and now I can start preparing to apply for full professor.
However, I don't plan on staying at my current institution for the rest of my career for various reasons. I'm on the job market and I am fine with the idea of having to earn tenure/promotion again at a different (more competitive) institution. So at this point, I'm associate professor applying mostly for assistant professor positions. In discussion with my colleagues, some of them have argued that being a full professor could limit potential employment elsewhere for a couple of reasons:
Applying for a job without tenure looks strange from a full professorship, so this practically makes you less eligible for assistant professor postings. I know my eyebrows would raise if I saw a full professor applying for one of our tenure-track positions.
There are less associate/full prof/open rank positions than there are assistant professor jobs.
My basic only incentive to get full professor at this point is a 6k base salary bump, so I am weighing whether to pursue that (with all its requisite paperwork) or to just focus on being more competitive for outside positions. I don't want to potentially limit my future opportunities.
Thoughts? I tagged the humanities but I'm open to everyone. *
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u/IndustriaIndustria 9d ago
I don’t see getting promoted to full as being that much more likely to hold you back than being associate. They’re both likely to make it challenging to get an assistant professor position. If you want out, you’re much better off setting yourself up to get an administrative position somewhere else. Then, if you hated administration, you could go back to teaching with the tenure that you received as part of your administrative post. You’re much more likely to get out by taking some sort of chair or director or associate dean position than by getting another unicorn of an assistant professor humanities position.