Topic: A (brief) rant about referring to UK academia/academic titles in film
As promised in my introduction post, I just wanted to briefly set the record straight for nobody in particular about how you refer to academics and academic life in the UK. Films/books/TV shows, etc always get this wrong, and it always kinda bugs me. However, I think X-Men First Class, which I watched over the weekend, finally pushed me over the edge. In a desperate attempt to relate it to something to do with DIF, it's also not quite right in the first chapter of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, which I started reading after Brian and Mike plugged it in a couple of episodes. (And I really like it, btw. A really interesting alternative take on the material, so thanks guys!)
Here's the main thing to remember: in the UK, 'professor' is not the generic word for a member of academic staff at a college or university. 'Professor' is a rank, and indeed the highest general rank in the system. So only very senior members of a department will have the title of "Professor" and be referred to as, e.g., "Professor Smith".
The generic word in the UK is 'lecturer'. So when I'm going through immigration in the UK, and they ask me what I do, I say "I'm a lecturer." In formal situations, anyone below the rank of professor is addressed as "Doctor", assuming that they have a PhD (which almost everybody in the UK does now, though that wasn't always the case).
So, yes, of course in First Class they want to get a call back? call forward? to "Professor X", but really, since it sounds like he's just passed his oral examination on his PhD, they should announce him as "Doctor Charles Francis Xavier" and the conversation with Raven should be "So, you're a lecturer now", to which he should reply "you don't actually get to be called a lecturer until you have a teaching position".
The other thing is that there's no such thing as tenure in the UK. (Thatcher did away with it.) Labor laws are a little different, and unionization is a bit more common than in the States. (There's one that represents me as a lecturer, for example.) But if they want to get rid of people, it's exactly the same procedure as if we worked in a widget factory (which, increasingly, it feels like we do, but that really is well off-topic).
Anyway, if I can save one person writing a script or a story from talking about a 30 year-old as "a tenured professor of History at Liverpool University", I'll have done my job. 
Last edited by sellew (2013-07-29 10:55:44)
