The academic world is about as preoccupied with titles and ranks as a military. My last school I had a “lecturer” who was very bitter he would never have professor status even though he had a PhD and taught more sections than anybody else. Looked up compensation and he actually made more than everybody but the department chair.
University careers are often highly political and not the least bit transparent. There will be committees that make hiring and promotion choices and you will often just guess as to the process.
Now true brilliance and accomplishment can cut through, but not even then and not even in STEM. Men who ended up getting Nobel Prizes lived near poverty as assistants to senior faculty in the years after the Manhattan Project.
Now, the one way I know to cut through pc bs at schools $$$$$$$
You endow a chair and basically pick a decent man to occupy it. He picks his successor or there’s a small panel with explicit instructions (not foolproof over time) or if you have the coin you found something like the Hoover Institute or a Hillsdale or Ave Maria.
I can assure you most of the professors at my school do not have PHDs
The academic world is about as preoccupied with titles and ranks as a military. My last school I had a “lecturer” who was very bitter he would never have professor status even though he had a PhD and taught more sections than anybody else. Looked up compensation and he actually made more than everybody but the department chair.
University careers are often highly political and not the least bit transparent. There will be committees that make hiring and promotion choices and you will often just guess as to the process.
Now true brilliance and accomplishment can cut through, but not even then and not even in STEM. Men who ended up getting Nobel Prizes lived near poverty as assistants to senior faculty in the years after the Manhattan Project.
Now, the one way I know to cut through pc bs at schools $$$$$$$
You endow a chair and basically pick a decent man to occupy it. He picks his successor or there’s a small panel with explicit instructions (not foolproof over time) or if you have the coin you found something like the Hoover Institute or a Hillsdale or Ave Maria.