For reasons that readers will be familiar with, this summer’s media coverage of higher education has seen one conversation after another about what it means to be appointed as a professor.
It is important to point out that not all professorial appointments are the same – and nor do they need to be.
While many people talk about professorial appointments, relatively few truly understand the process and why such appointments are made. In part, this is because academic promotion and appointment procedures are often opaque, even to those working within higher education.
When is a professor a professor?
Before discussing how professors are appointed, it is worth clarifying what is meant by a Professor or Full Professor, as distinct from an Assistant Professor or Associate Professor.
A Full Professor holds the highest academic rank within a university and broadly speaking, there are three equally valid routes to attaining this position.
The traditional and most widely recognised route is through academic achievement. Appointments are based primarily on an individual’s research output, including both the quality and quantity of publications, demonstrating a significant contribution to their field. Other important criteria include excellence in teaching, leadership in research, supervision of doctoral students, postdoctoral researchers, and other academics, as well as the ability to generate research income for the institution. Individuals who meet these criteria typically establish strong national and often international reputations and are recognised as experts in their discipline.
Appointments through this route are usually assessed by an internal university panel, supported by external members and informed by references from several established professors who can objectively evaluate the candidate against clearly published criteria. This process is most commonly used for internal promotions and therefore must adhere to rigorous human resources and equality standards.
While this is how the process is intended to work, many academics can point to examples where individuals have been appointed despite not fully meeting every aspect of the expected criteria.
A second route to a professorship is through appointment to a senior academic leadership position, such as Head of Department, Dean, or Pro Vice-Chancellor. In these cases, the professorial title may be attached to the role itself, reflecting the responsibilities and strategic significance of the position.
A third route exists where a university’s leadership decides, for strategic reasons, to appoint an individual to a professorship. This may be done to strengthen an emerging field of research, support institutional transformation, address workforce needs, or tackle long-standing structural inequalities. In these circumstances, universities may exercise greater flexibility and appoint individuals who do not yet satisfy the full range of traditional professorial criteria.
The purpose of such appointments is not to lower standards but to recognise a different set of strengths which are believed to have equal validity. These appointments are typically based on an individual’s unique expertise, leadership potential, professional impact, or ability to help the institution achieve specific strategic objectives. They are often targeted at external candidates or younger academics whose career trajectories indicate exceptional promise, even if they have not yet accumulated the conventional portfolio associated with a traditional professorship.
Given the nature of these appointments, it is not appropriate to judge such individuals solely against the criteria used for traditional promotion-based professorships. They are appointed for different reasons, fulfil different roles, and are expected to deliver against different, though equivalent, measures of success.
As we have seen, these appointments can sometimes create frustration among traditionally appointed academics, particularly when institutions fail to communicate clearly the rationale behind them. Without transparency regarding the justification, selection process, and expected outcomes, appointees can find themselves isolated and forced to defend their legitimacy, especially when their appointment becomes associated with broader political or social debates.
Ultimately, the decision to appoint someone as a professor rests with the university itself, not the appointee, although institutions generally seek to maintain standards that are comparable across the sector.
Addressing underrepresentation
One area where strategic appointments may be particularly relevant is the continuing underrepresentation of Black professors in UK higher education. While students from global majority backgrounds comprise a significant proportion (28 per cent) of the student population, representation at the most senior academic levels remains disproportionately low with only one per cent or about 250 Black professors when there should be four per cent or 1000 Black professors given the population breakdown.
To deliver on their core objectives, universities increasingly recognise the need for a broader range of academics, researchers, perspectives, and research agendas. Achieving this goal is unlikely if appointments continue to be drawn from a narrow and historically homogeneous pool of candidates. Borrowing a concept from genetics, diversity increases the capacity of a system to adapt, innovate, and succeed.
What remains clear, however, is that many UK universities have struggled to articulate the business and academic case for diversity. Too often, institutions rely solely on social justice arguments, which some audiences perceive as political rather than strategic. If universities are to make professorial appointments intended to address structural imbalances, including the underrepresentation of Black professors, they must clearly explain why such appointments are necessary, the objectives they serve, and the value they are expected to deliver both within the institution and beyond it.
Only through greater transparency can universities maintain confidence in the professorial title while ensuring that academic excellence, leadership, innovation, and institutional transformation are all recognised as legitimate pathways to professorship.
Asking Black professors about their journey is expected and beneficial. But given the different appointment processes and the fact that we can dismiss the genetics arguments as pseudoscience, the scale of the underrepresentation needs to be explained and addressed.
In this context, the more important question we should all be asking the university sector and wider society is not how someone became a professor but where are the 750 missing Black professors?
