Promotion to Prof without request

[WhatNoReally]

My sister applied for a promotion to Reader and was given Chair instead. Obviously she's delighted! It sounded unusual to me so I was just wondering if anyone has heard of this happening before?

Yes, I have heard of it happening on occasion. I thought Reader didn’t usually carry a salary increase beyond SL level, so is a stop-gap until someone applies for Prof. So if they think you are ready already, I guess it makes sense to award Prof. I also know of people who applied direct for prof from SL and got it.

Interesting. I think at her level Reader did involve a salary increase, although I'm always shocked at how low the salary bands are given how qualified these people are

Uni, not level

Ah, okay. Well done to her! They obviously recognise her talent, which can’t be said for some places.

The university may be acting proactively to address the gender pay gap, now that universities have to report on this.

I've never heard of this but it would be beneficial to me if my uni did it! (going up for Reader now but borderline with Professor under a couple of criteria). The thing about the gender pay gap makes sense - there's also the whole Athena Swan thing, which I imagine will look at things like % of women professors...

This happened to a friend of mine years ago. She applied for a vacancy that was advertised as Reader/Prof as a Reader (she was an SL at the time) and was offered a Chair.

I think it was the external moderators /committee who made the difference - assessing her application against those from other universities. She'd applied for an incremental pay increase (on SL scale) last year and the internal committee refused! Not that much changed since then.

I'm a professor at a RG university. This was very uncommon in the past, but in recent years, I know of two academics who went straight from senior lecturer to professor, and there was another who was promoted to reader from lecturer. As @acfree123 said, it's an important mechanism for addressing the balance of power in universities and ensuring that employment gaps (the gender gap, for example) are closed. It was beneficial for our department in obtaining an Athena Swan Silver award, as we had to present a lot of data on gender equality within our department.

I've actually seen it happen from L to Prof! But only once, and it was not due to gender. I'm uncomfortable with this sort of 'jump' if it's just to address the pay gap etc, as for everyone who gets a 'jump' there are plenty (including women) who don't and who feel aggrieved when they're expected to perform to the same standards as everyone else but see a colleague boosted up the ladder.

Good for her, I hope she took it!

Was it in the social sciences? This has never happened to me or anyone I know!

It happens at my place to save money. No automatic spinal pay increase for profs, who therefore can be paid less than readers!

I've also seen it as a retention strategy (I've been external referee on several cases like this).

And bless you @WhatNoReally for saying how surprised you are at the salary level in relation to qualifications!

That's interesting. If you are a prof then how can you be paid less than a reader? Is it maybe not a full professorship? I've seen plenty of institutions who are now adopting the American titles. It's so confusing.

Good for her, I've known sone 'professors' who shouldn't have the title on their academic profile but squinney loads about themselves and how amazing they are and they'll go elsewhere unless they get a chair ... usually I'd suggest they do go elsewhere as they're useless, and given a chair for the wrong reasons ... we need less of these and more people who academically deserve it!

At my place, as a professor, I am invited to apply for a pay rise every 2 years (although over COVID, the invitation's been 3 years in the making ...). We have to say how we've outperformed the expectations of the professorial band into which we've been categorised, in order to get an incremental rise. We do get national pay rises, but there's no automatic increment.

And note the level of performance required: it's not enough to do the job well, you need to hit over-performance criteria.

And at least my place isn't Imperial!

Is it maybe not a full professorship?

No, this is the norm for the full Professorship - you come off the expectation for automatic annual incremental increases, and you apply for a pay rise. Ranks below full professor do still have automatic annual incremental increases.

Ironic, eh? People think professors are the rich ones ...

The top of the reader band doesn’t overlap with the prof band in my place. So that couldn’t happen I don’t think

I have never heard of this either. Must be quite rare

But surely the salary for lowest Professorial band is higher than that for a Reader?

And if not, what is the rationale for that?

‘At least my place isn’t imperial’ what does this mean?

Do Imperial do something weird?

I have to say I’ve always found it odd that there seems to be a total lack of transparency at my institution about how professional pay works. The pay bands for profs are not published, and there is a massive discrepancy in pay between professional colleagues who’ve been promoted and those who’ve been appointed from outside the institution.

To go back to the OP’s query, there is a different promotion process where I work if you’re applying to be a professor, compared with other grades. A colleague applied for Reader, but their application was deemed strong enough for a Professorship, so they were told by the committee to go away and work on a new application, list new referees, etc.

In my experience (in RG unis) it's generally advised to apply straight from SL for Chair and not Reader. The reason is that if you go for Reader you will need to demonstrate what you have done during the readership to qualify for Chair, which is not always easy. In terms of salary, professors get automatic increments but up to a certain point. Once you reach the ceiling (usually after 5 years) you need to apply to move to a different band.

What does 'chair' mean?

What gets me is that an application for trader/prof is essentially a snapshot in time. I've never seen anyone demoted, though they've not brought in exceptional funding or done anything new or innovative. So they may not progress up the prof scale, but they are not sliding down it either.