William Poole is not chasing titles because he has no self-esteem issues

“Good morning, professor!” “Good morning, assistant professor!” “Good morning associate professor (first class)!” “Good morning adjunct-associate professor (second class)!”

There is a movement in the university to rename your average don a ‘professor’ of some sort, an attempt, apparently, to make our system intelligible to our foreign and particularly our American colleagues.

These foreigners, you see, are seemingly so baffled at the sight of mere ‘doctors’, that they recoil in incomprehension, and won’t do academic business with us.

Even worse, at home quaking dons face their families clothed merely in their DPhil robes, their self-esteem so wounded that the only plaster that can be found is yet another title. “What do you want for Christmas, son?” “Daddy, I want you to be a professor.”

The university has long been doing this, awarding stick-on titular ‘professorships’ to those who can plead their wounds with sufficient eloquence. It now proposes further steps down this primrose path, and this is a Bad Thing.

There are two reasons why. The first is that it encourages a mentality where those who sing certain carols will expect Santa to be good to them, and Santa will start dropping too many heavy hints about what kind of carols he likes. Those who don’t want to sing will not get presents, nor will those who prefer singing on their own, and who stopped believing in Santa when they grew up.

The second reason is more important. The more formally hierarchical we become as dons, the closer we drift to ‘performance-related pay’. Yes, the quality of academics varies wildly, and not a day goes by without a pleasant muse on the inadequacy of many a colleague. But it would be a disaster to try to formalise this into a list and link it to pay. It would wreck faculties and common rooms, and sour what are perhaps unequal but nevertheless amicable relationships.

It is a fact of life that academics differ in brains and effectiveness, but, with the exception of the few statutory professorships, we keep the peace by keeping this separate from rank and salary. This is a Good Thing.

If people are desperate to be distinguished by words rather than deeds, might I recommend that we invert the hierarchy?

Let’s start off with everyone called ‘professor’, as a kind of security blanket for those lacking in confidence, or shunned by their children or their American funder.

In due course, those who become properly brilliant will be referred to simply by their first name. Another option would be, as in the Lords, to adopt one’s own name. I propose that they all be taken from classic Dr Who: ‘Kroton of Balliol’, ‘Sontaran of St Hugh’s’; ‘Abominable Snowman of New College’; now that would be stylish.

In Shakespeare’s Tempest, the two drunken fools Stephano and Trinculo try to overthrow Prospero, lord of the isle, but become distracted by his glittering wardrobe, and dress up in his clothes. To his cries of “O king Stephano! O peer! O worthy Stephano!”, the “monster” Caliban, in a line of perfect blank verse, reprimands Trinculo: “Let it alone, thou fool, it is but trash.”

Dr William Poole is a tutor in English and Fellow of New College, researching early-modern literary, intellectual and scientific history