Appointing
university professors - Choosing the best candidate
© Richard
Parncutt 2003-2006
As the volume of research literature increases, the ability of individuals to keep up with it decreases. Academics become increasingly specialised, and subdisciplines become increasingly numerous and narrow.
One result of this development is that it is increasingly difficult for a university to choose its professors. When a university advertises for a new professor, it is usually looking for something that it does not already have - a specialist in a specific area. If no-one at that university is a specialist in that area, the university needs to rely on advice from outside.
The situation becomes critical when the members of a professorial selection committee have their own opinions and agendas and are free to ignore the advice that they receive from external referees. This problem can only be reliably solved by giving the external referees equal voting rights - that is, by making them part of the committee - and ensuring that they are not a minority.
Thus, university administrators (presidents, vice chancellors, rectors) should promote the following principles:
1. Professorships should only be advertised in subdisciplines that are represented by well established and respected international societies, conference series and journals.
2. The short list should primarily be determined by globally recognized representatives of the specific subdiscipline.
Rationale
Politicization or expert evaluation? University professors should be appointed primarily on the basis of their research contribution to their specific subdiscipline. To ensure that this principle is adhered to, it is important to avoid or at least minimize the politicization of professorial search, selection and appointment procedures. Politicization can lead to inappropriate appointments in the following ways:
In all such cases, there is a danger that the real international experts, and the younger candidates with the greatest potential to contribute to their specific field in research and teaching, will be arbitrarily excluded from the selection procedure. Even in the absence of politicization, committee members who are not in a position to evaluate candidates' contributions to the professorship's subdiscipline directly must instead base their selections on criteria that are foreign to that subdiscipline, which can lead to problematic decisions.
Current practice. Of course each university is responsible for its own professorial selection, because it enjoys the benefits of successful appointments and bears the burden of unsuccessful ones. But this does not mean that professorial appointment committees should primarily comprise local scholars and administrative personnel - as is currently usually the case. While it is important that members of the university are represented on the selection committee, an even more important consideration is that applicants are evaluated by their intellectual peers, who know the candidates not only academically but also personally and are well qualified to make recommendations on both levels.
The role of peer review. In recent decades, peer review procedures for processing journal submissions have developed considerably. Most good journals in most disciplines now have some kind of peer review system in place. The same applies to grant applications. Peer review guarantees that the quality of journal contributions and financed research projects is determined by experts in relevant subdisciplines. Unfortunately, procedures for appointing university professors - which is a much more important decision than accepting or rejecting a journal submission or grant application - have not always kept pace with this development. Committees usually ask for advice from experts, but may also ignore, misinterpret or fail to understand that advice.
Why this issue is important
The social, cultural and economic roles of universities. Universities represent an important long-term investment in the future of every modern nation. Universities are funded by a mixture of public and private sources. In exchange, they contribute significantly to national economies and cultures. The training that university graduates receive leads, directly or indirectly, to improvements in the quality of life via a combination of direct cultural contributions and improvements in the efficiency and international competitiveness of virtually all sectors of the economy. It is therefore in the best interest of every nation to ensure that its universities strive for the highest academic standards.
Academic quality. Universities exist to carry out and promote scholarship. Thus, the most important aim of any university should be to maintain and improve the quality and quantity of its research and teaching. The most important factor influencing that quality and quantity is the number and quality of its professors.
Globalisation. University research and teaching has always been international. In the globalised 21st Century, a professorship should only be granted to a scholar who has made a globally recognized contribution to the corresponding subdiscipline. By "global" I mean international not only in the sense of two or more nations, but at the level of major global conferences and journals. Increasingly, universities compete at a global level to attract the best candidates for professorial positions. In order to succeed in this competition, universities must first of all be in a position to recognize global leaders; for many universities, this may mean a fundamental revision of their traditional selection procedures. A professor brings global knowledge and competence to a local context. S/he connects and balances the global with the local. Her or his teaching should be both globally based and locally relevant. Her or his local research should feed back to global discussions, evaluations and programs.
Political role of universities. The human race is currently seriously threatened by a number of interacting phenomena, including global warming (and other effects of pollution; loss of biodiversity), large-scale poverty (including hunger and disease), and international conflict (cultural differences, competition over limited resources, militarization). Conventional politics may not be capable of solving problems of this magnitude, because that involves strategic planning that extends beyond the usual 3-5 years of a politician's term of office and beyond the geographic boundaries of a politician's electorate. Universities can contribute to a solution to these problems by creating professorships in subdisciplines such as interfaith dialog, developmental economics, international law, peace psychology, intercultural sociology, pacifist and minority literature, art and music, applied history, alternative energy, and biodiversity.
The members of a professorial search or selection committee
Peer evaluation. The objective, expert evaluation of candidates' global knowledge and abilities can only realistically be achieved by other globally recognized representatives of that subdiscipline. To ensure that every professorship is offered to the best candidate, the academic peers should not (only) be referees, but rather full members of the selection committee with equal voting rights (hereafter expert members). Of course external referees may also be consulted, but it is important to remember that they generally have no direct power over the final decision.
Financing the selection procedure. A selection committee usually meets at least three times:
This procedure can be prohibitively expensive if several of the expert members live in other countries - as they should if the committee's decisions are to be reasonably objective. Today, travel expenses can be drastically reduced by means of modern information technology such as video conferencing; anyone can buy a good webcam for about $100 and thereafter video-telephone across the world for free. Another possibility is to hold the interviews at a major international conference in the corresponding specific subdiscipline that most expert members and short listed candidates would normally have attended anyway. Since a professorship typically costs a university at least one million dollars or euros by the time the professor leaves, retires or dies, it is worth spending a few thousand on the selection procedure.
Independence. The expert members of the professorial selection committee should be independent in the sense that they have as little previous contact with each other as possible and do not depend on each other for their future career development. They may be asked to sign a declaration to that effect.
Academic diversity. The expert members should together represent the most important different current approaches and topics within the specific subdiscipline of the professorship. Again, they may be asked to sign a declaration to that effect.
Local members. The other members of the selection committee should represent the university and include colleagues with which the new professor will be in regular contact. They evaluate the local (as opposed to global) suitability of each candidate. Although the local members are generally confined to professors and adminstrators, it may be a good idea to include a student (since students often have fresh ideas that others forget) and a member of the teaching staff who is not a professor (if that person is also an expert in the area of the position).
Ethics
Each university should appoint an ethics and standards committee that
The members of the ethics and standards committee should be academically qualified, but they need have no expertise in the specific area of a specific advertisement. A member of the ethics and standards committee should attend every meeting of every selection committee. Since the committee is responsible for preventing discrimination on the basis of sex, nationality, skin colour, cultural background, religion, disability, sexual preference (etc.) and for ensuring adherence to principles of affirmative action for both women and specific minorities, the majority of its members should be women, and as far as possible relevant minorities should also be represented.
The guidelines, which should be published in the internet, should cover all aspects of the appointment procedure, including for example guidelines on appropriate and inappropriate questions, remarks and behaviours. They should specify procedures for cases where applicants are unable to attend an interview due to temporary illness, accident or pregnancy. They should also be flexible enough to allow committees to adapt procedures to suit specific constraints of their subdiscipline. The internet address of the guidelines should be sent not only to all members of all selection committees but also to all applicants.
The guidelines should emphasize the importance of transparency and anonymity in professorial selection procedures. All procedures should be transparent and anonymous in the sense that as many details as possible are made public. Exceptions to this rule should be detailed in the guidelines; for example, a report on a search procedure should consistently suppress the role of specific individuals in specific decisions.
The ethics committee should have the power to prevent a job being offered until ethical requirements are fulfilled or an applicant's confidential complaint is considered.
Further considerations
The advertisement text. The text of the advertisement should be based primarily on the current academic needs of the university or organisational unit and not on the knowledge and skills of specific known candidates. The text should be sufficiently specific that only experts within well-defined disciplinary boundaries may apply, but also sufficiently general that many scholars from many countries might realistically apply. Above all, the text should never be tailored to a given candidate, i.e. it should not be so specific as to eliminate all but one or a small number of candidates. Since this aspect is so important and so difficult to control, the university should take concrete steps to solve the problem. For example it could do both of the following:
Gender mainstreaming. Since professors should represent and mirror the society upon which they depend and to which they contribute, and since women and men tend to have different academic abilities and different approaches to research and teaching, it follows that the quality of university teaching and research depends on the ratio of men to women among the professors. To promote a reasonable gender balance among university professors, at least 1/3 of the expert members of each selection committee and at least 1/3 of the local members should be women. For example, a relatively small selection committee of 6 members may include 3 international experts in the specific subdiscipline of the professorships of which at least one is a woman, and 3 representatives of the university and department of which at least one is a woman.
Cultural diversity. For similar reasons, it is important to promote cultural diversity among university professors. To achieve this aim, the committee should as far as possible include representatives of minority groups that are either present the local area or relevant for the specific subdiscipline.
Language. For practical reasons, the entire selection procedure should be conducted in the most important international language of the specific subdiscipline, which today - for better or worse - is usually English. That includes the text of the advertisement, the applications, the meetings themselves, the confidential minutes, and the public report detailing the main reasons why specific candidates were preferred to others or eliminated from the procedure. If the professor is required to work in another language (e.g. the local language), her or his ability in this language should be evaluated separately.
Evaluation criteria. The main selection criterion for university professorships should be research (e.g. publications, collaboration, reviewing, grants, international activity and recognition), closely followed by teaching and administration/collegiality. All such criteria should be systematically evaluated both qualitatively and quantitatively by the committee. In the interest of objectivity, the final short list should be derived quantitatively from quantitative evaluations. For example, if each candidate is given three grades - one for research, one for teaching, and one for administration/collegiality - and these are appropriately weighted against each other (e.g. 3:2:1 or 1:1:1, depending on the aims of the appointment), the short list can be determined directly from the rank order of the totals. Ideally, all such grades should be determined collectively by committee members with relevant expertise, experience and knowledge; and each (sub-) grade should be briefly justified in writing. If insufficient reliable knowledge is available within the committee, other experts should be approached.
Tenure. Professorships should in general be tenured, so that professors can plan large-scale, long-term research projects. However, new professors should not be granted tenure immediately, since no selection procedure can predict how a new professor will perform in a new context. Therefore, professorships should generally be "tenure track". Tenure should only be granted after a period of 3-5 years, during which the main criteria (research, teaching, administration and collegiality) are systematically reviewed by the candidate’s peers and colleagues. Tenured professorships may also be granted immediately to a candidate who already holds a tenured professorship at another university.
Exploring political positions and attitudes. Candidates can be asked to write short statements about relevant issues such as equal opportunity and affirmative action for women and minorities, collegiality, and the evaluation of teaching and research.
Legal constraints. Some universities are subject to national laws that hinder or prevent the implementation of the recommendations in this document. In such cases the universities should take steps to have the legal situation changed.