Whether it's valid or not, authoring a book on a particular subject usually qualifies someone as an expert on a subject. Especially if it is on an esoteric and modern subject like online socializing.
I know of someone who published a book on Golang in 2010. The rating of that book is sitting in the 3s out of 5 stars last I checked 6 years ago. Is he an expert at Go? Not in my most humblest opinion, is the content of the book good? Also a no in my honest, must charitable view. How far did he get with showing people how to program with Go? About as far as you'd get in 2 hours on the golang docs even considering a very poorly skilled college student doing the exercises. There's maybe 170 pages in the book. I'm almost certain the book has not reached even 200 sales at the highest.
Some people write a book to be able to self promote.
I was on a meetup, where 4 scrum master "experts" were doing some presentation and they gave out their book. It was around 100 pages with very big font :) written by 4 people. So basically 4 bad essays of 25 page each.
But hey, they could then tell to HR that they (co)wrote a book on agile methodologies. Also they (co)hosted lectures for meetup attendees.
The more interesting part, is that this wasnt even the worst book about agile / scrum that I have read...
Someone I know did that too. Published a blog post then started adding “author” to their credentials. Spoke at a local 10 person meetup about some node.js framework at the time and promptly added “speaker” to the list.
As I said, I don't necessarily think that writing a book is a valid criteria, but people that do so are often used as expert sources in journalism or even court cases. It's not like you can get someone who has a phd in 4chan to interview.
It's been years now that AI can write books. Writing a book nowadays doesn't mean anything.
"Doing your own research" is laughed at now, but this is actually used to be the job of journalists to do that.
That doesn't mean not using experts to help understand complex subjects.
But what journos like the NYT is fishing experts and using them as a "proof" is simply arguing from a conclusion.
> "Lecturer" is a non-tenure-track position that means you get paid a few thousand dollars to teach a class.
In the US (which this person is).
In most of the rest of the English-speaking world, the majority of full-time academics are "lecturers" (or even "senior lecturers"), expected to do both teaching and research, and a PhD is usually required (but exceptions have occasionally been made). An "adjunct/visiting/associate/guest lecturer" is a different thing, that's generally a part-time or even honorary position, and there are no expectations about research output.
Part of this is because Americans inflated the title of professor to the point of making almost every full-time/permanent academic one, whereas in the UK and Commonwealth professor was reserved for the most senior rung of academics, with associate professor for those part-way there. (For most fields–medicine has a lot more professors, but clinical professor is generally a giveaway they spend the majority of their time treating patients, and teaching and research is a side-gig.)
Although–I wonder if everyone in the US uses the terminology in the same way. It is not unheard of for some university out there to just do something weird which others don't. Not saying that's true in this person's case, but not impossible.
> UK and Commonwealth professor was reserved for the most senior rung of academics, with associate professor for those part-way there.
This is the same in the US. Tenure-track starts with assistant professor. Associate professor is when you first get tenure. Finally after having tenure for 5-7 years you can become full professor.
> This is the same in the US. Tenure-track starts with assistant professor. Associate professor is when you first get tenure. Finally after having tenure for 5-7 years you can become full professor.
It is different in the US. In the US, someone who just finished their PhD and wants an academic career will look for an “assistant professor” entry level academic job. Whereas, in the UK/Commonwealth, the entry level academic job is a “lecturer”-which is equivalent to US “assistant professor”. In the UK system, the first promotion is not to “associate professor”, it is to “senior lecturer”. Then a senior lecturer looks to get promoted to “associate professor”-which is actually a more senior/exclusive title than US “associate professor”. So this is my point-the US calls junior academics “assistant/associate professor”, whereas traditionally in the UK/Commonwealth they aren’t a type of “professor”, they are a type of “lecturer”. An “associate professor” in the UK/Commonwealth is roughly equivalent to a full professor in the US, so a UK/Commonwealth full professorship is (in itself) more prestigious than a US one-a UK/Commonwealth full professor is more like a “distinguished professor” in the US
Furthermore, it’s not unheard of in UK/Commonwealth system for people to get stuck at the senior lecturer level and never get promoted to associate professor-a person who retires as a senior lecturer hasn’t reached the heights of academia, but they haven’t been a failure. By contrast, the US hands out senior academic titles much more easily, which makes the a failure to reach them look like much more of a career failure.
As always there are exceptions: a small number of UK/Commonwealth universities have been adopting US-style academic titles (such as “assistant professor”), and Canada has always been far more US-influenced than the rest of the Commonwealth
The main distinction as far as I understand is tenure / not-tenure, everything else is just window dressing. Is Senior Lecturer when they're awarded tenure in the UK?
Generally it's failure to get tenure (or failure to get on the tenure track) that's considered a failed academic career. Many professors might stop at the associate level and not go on to full professor, but they don't care because they have tenure.
> The main distinction as far as I understand is tenure / not-tenure, everything else is just window dressing. Is Senior Lecturer when they're awarded tenure in the UK?
The UK abolished academic tenure in 1988. So nowadays nobody gets tenure in the UK.
In the 21st century, “tenure” is primarily a North American concept (US and Canada), the rest of the English-speaking world doesn’t have it
The main point of tenure in the US is once you’ve got it, you now can’t be fired without reasonable cause. In many other countries, that’s not a special perk for academics, it is a standard aspect of employment law for all non-temporary employees - making the whole idea of “tenure” rather meaningless
Researcher, perhaps, but seems to not be what his credentials or college role is about.
https://www.morgan.edu/screenwriting-and-animation/faculty-a...