2.1. Sociologists as Scholars

Researchers and Research Communities

Sometimes nonscientists are confused about the various actors and groups involved in conducting scientific research. Not all of them are professors. Here is a breakdown of the various terms used to describe researchers and research communities—as seen in the field of sociology, but more broadly, too.

Doctorates and other degrees. To teach sociology (or any academic discipline, for that matter) at a four-year university, instructors in many countries typically must have an advanced degree known as a doctorate or PhD (in Latin, philosophiae doctor, or “doctor of philosophy”). This requires the scholar to spend several years taking classes and then several more years conducting an independent and original research project known as a dissertation, or doctoral thesis. Oftentimes, the scholar gets a master’s degree after two or so years in graduate school, perhaps after completing a master’s thesis—an independent project on a smaller scale than a dissertation. They may stop their studies at that point or continue to complete their PhD. For dissertations and theses, students typically need to get three or more scholars from their department (and frequently from outside the department or school as well) to serve on a thesis committee. Members of the committee review the student’s work and must all sign off on both the proposal for the study (the thesis prospectus) and the completed study for students to receive their degree. One faculty member, usually the student’s main advisor, chairs that committee. In most departments, students present their prospectus and completed study to their committee and respond to the committee members’ feedback and criticisms in a storied oral ritual known as the dissertation or thesis defense—which can sometimes be as brutal as this relevant XKCD comic suggests (but usually not, thankfully).

Professors, faculty members, departments. After scholars earn their PhD, they frequently go on to work as professors. Within a college or university, these scholars will be identified as faculty members of particular departments, which are generally divided along disciplinary lines (e.g., the Department of Sociology). U.S. universities distinguish between full professors (typically just called “professors” in their job titles), associate professors, and assistant professors. One key distinction between these types of professors is whether they have academic tenure, a form of job security that makes it difficult to fire a professor. Tenure is meant to allow professors to study and write about whatever they want without fear of political repercussions for speaking the “truth.” A college or university will grant a professor tenure after a lengthy process of tenure review, which involves other faculty at that school and other schools being asked to assess the quality and quantity of the professor’s research, teaching, and other contributions. Typically, associate and full professors (also known as senior faculty) have tenure, while assistant professors (also known as junior faculty or tenure-track faculty) are in the process of applying for it. Assistant professors typically “go up for tenure” after spending six or so years as junior faculty.

Instructors, lecturers, teaching faculty, adjunct faculty. The number of tenured and tenure-track faculty (collectively known as tenure-line faculty) in the United States has declined dramatically in recent decades, in part because of desires by universities to hire cheaper instructors without tenure protections. According to data compiled by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), an advocacy organization representing academics, the numbers of “contingent faculty”—part-time- and full-time faculty appointed off the tenure track—has risen dramatically over the past several decades: from 43 percent of the academic labor force in 1975, to 69 percent in 2019 (AAUP 2020).

In the United States, faculty who are not tenured and not on the tenure track are often referred to teaching faculty and may have the title instructor or lecturer (to distinguish them from professors). Teaching faculty generally are not required to conduct research in addition to their teaching duties, but many do substantial amounts of research—perhaps in the hope of landing one of the dwindling number of available tenure-track positions. Sometimes teaching faculty are full-time and may even have the rank of “professor,” but this is typically qualified with the term “teaching professor” to underscore that they do not primarily conduct research.

Full-time non-tenure-track faculty accounted for 18 percent of the academic labor force in 2020, nearly double their proportion in 1975, but the numbers of part-time faculty have grown even more—to 52 percent of the labor force in 2019. Frequently, part-time instructors or lecturers do not have long-term contracts with the university, but are paid for each class they teach. These teachers are called adjunct faculty, or adjuncts, and they tend to suffer from low wages and job insecurity. The AAUP describes their pay rates as “appallingly low,” calculating that on average they received just $3,500 per course section taught in the 2019–20 academic year, with less than a third having employers who offered health insurance (AAUP 2020).

Research universities, liberal arts colleges, and community colleges. Some academic institutions focus primarily on research, while others focus primarily on teaching. In the United States, an influential ranking system, the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, distinguishes colleges and universities based on how much research their scholars do. At the research-intensive end are so-called R1 schools that engage in “very high research activity.” Notably, these schools have large populations of doctoral (PhD) students who are training to be professors. Many R1 schools are Ivy League schools with large endowments, but they also include many large public universities—particularly so-called land-grant universities (like Virginia Tech) largely created through legislation passed in the nineteenth century that granted federal lands for the purpose of founding universities.

Our school, Virginia Commonwealth University, is considered an R1 institution, though we should note that this designation can depend on particular departments or schools with a large research presence (like our medical school), and other departments or schools within that university may not be so research-focused. Overall, however, the tenure-line faculty at research universities (whether R1 or lower-ranked) tend to spend more of their time on conducting research, often leaving much of the actual work of teaching to graduate students or teaching faculty. Liberal arts colleges tend to conduct less research than research universities. These schools have few or no graduate students, offer smaller classes, and have faculty who are primarily focused on their teaching duties. Even if they do not have graduate students, however, liberal arts colleges offer four-year (bachelor’s) degrees. Community colleges, by contrast, offer only two-year (associate’s) degrees. Faculty at community colleges often do not conduct research, and they do not always have PhDs—although given the competitive job market we discussed earlier, PhD graduates increasingly are winding up teaching at these schools.

Think-tank scholars, policymakers, independent scholars. Sometimes, social scientists work as researchers at think tanks, which are organizations devoted to conducting research. Think tanks can be government agencies, but many are private groups funded by governments, corporations, foundations, or wealthy donors. Unlike academics, think-tank scholars typically do not teach students, though many researchers have faculty appointments at universities in addition to being paid by think tanks. For most think tanks, the goal of their research is to influence policymakers—top government, corporate, or other officials who can create laws, regulations, rules, and other sorts of policies that affect people’s behavior. As a result, much of the research that think tanks engage in is applied. That said, think-tank researchers are different from other nonacademic researchers in that they may do more in the way of basic research, and their paths often cross with those of academics. In fact, scholars at these institutions sometimes publish their work in academic journals and attend academic conferences. Their counterparts based at universities, in turn, will frequently cite and build on their work—a sign that they are part of the larger scientific conversation about basic research.

You may also find independent scholars—researchers without any affiliations to a university, think tank, or other institution—engaged in these sorts of debates about basic science. This is quite rare, however. In sociology (and across scientific fields, for that matter), your institutional credentials matter a great deal in how seriously your research is taken—for better, or for worse.