The Great Title Tangle: From Professor to People, and Beyond

Let's start with the revered title of "Professor"—once a label worn by the wise, the scholarly, and the absurdly tweedy. Now, in our glorious bureaucratic age, it has been turned into a totem pole of salary brackets, subtly masquerading as an academic meritocracy. Enter the holy trinity: Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and the exalted Full Professor. A system that many believe reflects academic prowess but, in reality, reveals how adept you are at navigating university politics and how many years you’ve stuck it out.

This isn’t about your teaching skills, your brilliance in research, or your ability to inspire the next generation. No, no—those are secondary. What really matters is how long you’ve survived, how you’ve buttered up the right committees, and how you’ve managed to publish just enough to maintain relevance without seeming like you’re doing too much. Assistant Professor? You're fresh off the boat and still think you can make a difference. Associate? Congratulations, you’ve lasted long enough to have a say in meetings. Full Professor? Well, now you get a corner office and, let's be honest, the time to sit back and observe the insanity with bemusement.

But wait, there’s more! Let’s not forget the other academic titles that sprinkle a little extra confusion into the mix—Adjunct Professor, Visiting Professor, Honorary Professor. Each of these adds just the right amount of ambiguity to make anyone outside of academia scratch their head in bewilderment. Adjuncts, for instance, are like academic mercenaries—contractors hired for specific courses, often paid a pittance, and expected to bring the same energy as someone tenured. It’s a great system: all the responsibility, none of the job security. It’s almost as if someone said, "How can we make academic life more stressful and less rewarding?" and adjuncts were born.

Ah, but we’re not done with the title madness. The modern university loves to keep up with the times—introducing the latest fashion: professors of "Responsible Leadership" and other similarly virtuous-sounding titles. It's only a matter of time before someone proposes a "Professor of Irresponsible Leadership," teaching lessons in how to lead with reckless abandon. These titles exist not because academia has had a moral epiphany, but because they look splendid in glossy brochures. What better way to tell students, parents, and donors, “Look! We’re doing the right thing!”—whether or not anyone can explain what "responsible leadership" actually means.

And let’s talk about how titles are now used as a tool for virtue-signalling. It’s not enough to be a Professor of Economics—no, now you must be a Professor of Sustainable Economics, or a Professor of Inclusive Finance. Every discipline must now come with a tag that screams, “We’re relevant, we swear!” And perhaps the pinnacle of this trend is the title of "Professor of Happiness." Yes, this is a real thing, and no, it’s not about distributing Prozac to students—it’s about researching well-being and life satisfaction. The irony is that if you surveyed most of the overworked, underpaid junior faculty, their happiness levels might make you think twice about where all that research funding is going.

Next on our whirlwind tour is the curious case of HR departments. You see, it wasn’t enough to handle recruitment, training, and the occasional awkward office romance. No, HR has now rebranded itself as "People." Because, obviously, a department can’t just deal with hiring anymore—it must show the world that it cares. Caring, in this context, means that you are now “bringing your whole self to work” under the watchful eye of the "People" department. The irony? Behind all this "we’re just people" rhetoric, nothing much has changed. It’s the same paperwork, the same bureaucracy, just wrapped in warmer, fuzzier language.

The irony of HR's transformation is that, despite the shiny new name and the feel-good messaging, the actual experience of dealing with HR often remains unchanged—or worse, more convoluted. Now, instead of simply getting your leave request processed, you have to navigate a maze of wellness initiatives, engagement surveys, and mandatory workshops about "finding your inner passion at work." HR has gone from a department focused on practicalities to a department focused on optics. They want to be seen as champions of culture and well-being, but when push comes to shove, they are still the gatekeepers of policies and procedures that often leave employees feeling frustrated and unheard.

In theory, rebranding as "People" is supposed to emphasise that employees are more than just numbers. In practice, it often feels like a superficial makeover. Employees are encouraged to share their thoughts, to "speak up," and to "be authentic," but many quickly learn that authenticity is only welcomed when it aligns with corporate messaging. Want to genuinely voice concerns about workload or systemic issues? Well, you might just find yourself in a "performance improvement" conversation with your People Partner. The shift to "People" may sound more humane, but the power dynamics haven't shifted one bit—if anything, they’ve become harder to challenge under the guise of friendliness.

But oh, the rebranding doesn’t stop there. Terms like "talent management," "employee engagement," and "people partners" have replaced good old-fashioned job descriptions. Because why be honest about the transactional nature of work when you can pretend it’s all one big happy family? It’s almost like if you say the word "people" enough times, the actual people involved might forget that their roles are largely defined by what budget line they happen to fall under. "You’re not a cog in the machine," they say. "You’re a People Partner!" Meanwhile, we all know it’s still about how many forms you’ve filled and how many processes you’ve followed.

And if you thought titles couldn’t get any stranger, have a look at the corporate world’s latest fads, which academia seems eager to mimic. There are now "Chief Happiness Officers" and "Wellness Gurus." It's as if we’ve collectively decided that throwing a trendy title at something will somehow make the reality less bleak. Need someone to manage a bunch of disillusioned staff? Call them the "Chief Engagement Champion." It’s like a bad joke, except we’re all in on the punchline—titles are smoke and mirrors, designed to distract us from the fact that the fundamental issues remain unsolved.

So where does that leave us? Academia, with its assistant, associate, and full professors; its honorary and adjunct titles; its increasingly elaborate and bizarre attempts at staying relevant, is spiralling into a kind of title inflation. We’ve traded substance for style, meaning for marketability. Titles that once reflected tangible roles have morphed into slogans, aspirations, or, worse yet, marketing tools. It’s the strange dance between academia and trendy management language, and it’s left us with job titles that sound more like lifestyle brands than actual roles.

The question we’re left with is this: when did we stop being people and become “People”? When did it become more important to have a title that looks good on a conference lanyard than to do the actual work those titles were meant to represent? As the world spins ever stranger, perhaps the only thing we can do is laugh at the absurdity of it all. And maybe, just maybe, remind ourselves that behind every lofty title, there’s just a person—usually under-caffeinated, often overworked, and trying to make sense of it all.