Well if you have a Fields medalist in math, or a Nobel laureate, you cannot have limits. These guys go directly to Full professor rank. In general I believe that the Department should, order the scientific journals, assign "points" of publication and point of citations, as well as points of teaching ability. Then you say to promote to a specific rank you should have such number of publication points, such number of citation points and such of teaching points. The promotion should be essentially automatic. With this method you avoid a lot of negative issues relative to promotions.

At my university, this period is 2 years.

I believe the ideal time to be something between 2 and 3 years.

I would prefer that promotions could occur without time limits. I would suggest that they were based solely on achievement of goals.

I agree with @Alexandre Beluco. And want to add the following:

-Time limits would make faculty members bit less productive and passive contributors towards knowledge transfer

-I think, a mix of time as well as achievements of goals based would be better.

The suggestion of Alelandre sounds good

In my university promotion is time dependent. It varies from 2- 8 years depending on the post. But it is also largely dependent on the availability of vacant post.

I agree with Alexandre and Asmat criteria of promotion

Well if you have a Fields medalist in math, or a Nobel laureate, you cannot have limits. These guys go directly to Full professor rank. In general I believe that the Department should, order the scientific journals, assign "points" of publication and point of citations, as well as points of teaching ability. Then you say to promote to a specific rank you should have such number of publication points, such number of citation points and such of teaching points. The promotion should be essentially automatic. With this method you avoid a lot of negative issues relative to promotions.

@ Prof. Drossos, very interesting and encouraging ways for promotion. I wish the Universities adopts such policy

Thank you Lourembam!

@ Costas. I agree that if you have a Fields medalist in math, or a Nobel laureate, no need for limits.

Dear @Nasser, I think the minimum time and publication numbers criteria are okay; if these conditions are removed then the quality of publications drops.

I also agree with the opinions of Costa Drossas and sharing Haddam.

There should not be any time limit

I have served in universities that have both and I believe no time limits encourage faculty to do more. I do not agree that the quality of the publications suffer on the contrary I believe that should be key. Sometimes one key publication out ways many week ones and that should be recognized a criteria such as work recognized in the field should be enough no matter the number of publications and/or years it took a person to get this recognition.

I also believe that service to the university and/or the field should be counted in addition to number of grants obtained, new programs,... We should evaluate the whole person but mainly the quality of the scientific work produced not the quantity of publications.

Between 2 to 3 years should be ideal I believe.

Dear Shafiq Haddad

Excuse me for misspelled your name. I used my smart mobile and it did select the blue color words.

There should not be any time line for faculty promotion. Unsatisfactory performance for a certain specified period of time does not ideally make any faculty to get promotion just because he/she already have spent certain duration in his present position (2-5 years).

The promotion criteria should remain flexible and solely be judged on performance basis.

I believe there should be a max period for an academic staff number for promotion from one level to the next (e.g., assistant prof to assoc prof) during which can apply for the promotion any time he or she achieves the requirements for the promotion. What do you think?

Dear All,

I am in complete agreement with Costas and I do not believe in a "uniform ideal"...in a world at the dimension of the men (which justifies the very good question of Nasser)...in some cases 6 months is too many (!), in other 3 years are insufficient...

In my opinion, it depends on the research project that underlies the work, objectives of the researcher, the choice of the University...and of that indefinable binding each of them; that makes difficult to assess the time required.

I find the proposal of Mohammed very judicious and practical.

Jean.

I agree with Alexandre and Costas. The promotion must meets the achievements of goals with conjunction of the professional efforts of the candidate. The period must be unlimited, may be 2-3 years could be sufficient for certain persons and not for others.

By definition a promotion is a recognition of the effort of the professional in his/her work, this successful employee must be granted for the superior grade when (s)he meets the goals assigned to him/her (the same for successful students who climb to up level or get their degrees).

In research and teaching, the requirements must be in correlation with the job. Teaching needs methods, organization, students ranking and supervision, knowledge transfer, etc ...and innovation from the professional in his job. Researching needs as well organization, experiment setups, knowledge collection and engineering, publications, supervision, editions, conference organization and meetings, patenting, interaction with the potential actors or users of the research, ... innovation and new ideas from the professional in his job or field, ...etc...

I think all this must be ranked for distinguishing between successful employees.. If an employee is more efficient or rapid than his/her colleagues why should he/she wait that the others achieve their goals??? The goal from any institution is the search of excellence, so encouraging successful employees by promotion is a natural way

@Fairouz Bettayeb , quite thought provoking reply. What other variables should be used to measure, "successful employee" in addition to teaching needs methods, organization, students ranking and supervision, knowledge transfer?

@Asmat, thank you for interest. I think that parameters for evaluating teachers are available; from their successful classes to their successful students' master and doctoral degrees. Their ability to pay attention or give special programs to the gifted students, to organize new methods of knowledge transfer, and new methods in students ranking. Their ability to make their courses shared through regional or international forums.....their ability to invite prestigious professors or worldwide colleagues in their courses 'or in close workshops' for even small periods ...etc....

The time limit of 5 years prescribed by many Universities is to judge the ability of the Faculty under different counts expressed by Fairouz Bettayeb and others.

Some say 2 to 3 yrs. may be sufficient. I personally feel that in addition to other Parameters one should be judged for his capability to volunteer to handle other subjects also(at least one more in the Gestation Period for Promotion) for which Five years may be just sufficient, if not more. Otherwise we find that some are in the habit of going on teaching the same subject(s) year after year to establish their name. This requirement becomes all the more in Engineering and other Professional Courses which expand Rapidly in new avenues of Knowledge.

In this context I may recall the comment of a Professor in an I.I.T. in connection with the then Demand for Stagnation Promotions. He asked whether somebody should be Promoted just because he is stagnating in the same Post when the Posts are limited and Aspirants for Promotion are More. Pointing out to a Tree nearby he asked whether it should be given Special Status just because it is there for many years.That is another problem of the other Extreme.That is why University Grants Commission introduced Merit Promotion Scheme.Senior Scale etc.

I feel that two years is too small a time to judge and Promote a Person,because one cannot even know whether the person will continue in that Organization or not. Five years may be fairly good to judge a Person's Performance to Promote the Person to a higher cadre.

P.S.

Dear @Nasser, I think that there is a factor that should be included while making the decision about this issue; most of the universities are teaching universities and want their faculty members to be more involved in teaching than research, so, they put limit on time for applying for a promotion. The situation with the research universities is different.

Dear Abedalla I think the reasons are reginal more than any thing else. I found that in the USA normally time limits are not there, while in the middle east and I think this originally came from Euorp there are time limits.

I worked at the CIty University of New York we did not have time limit. I work at Applied Science University in Jordan now and we have three kinds of limits five years between promotions with at least three at the institution, four if you get double the points needed.

Dear Abedallah, good to distinguish between teaching institutions and research institutions. The professional purposes of each are different, consequently the promotion requirements could be different as well. I think that developing countries as the Arabian,do to not attain the high standards yet and couldn't be compared with prestigious universities and research institutes from the world, for multiple reasons historical (most of them where under domination and were engaged in reconstruction after independence) and political (most of them lack democracy practices and/or face a corrupted system or governance). So we couldn't copy/paste USA or Europe universities formats without taking into account the real requirements and needs from the Arabian countries.

In Algeria, till 2008 teaching and research institutions were distinguished. Promotions requirements too. in Research institutions promotions needed time limit of 3 to 4 years, with professional requirements from publications, conferences' talks and organization, students degrees' supervision, research projects management, patenting, experimental setups, prototyping etc...

In teaching institution promotions were subject of magister and doctoral degrees, plus 1 publication (for the doctorate), 2or 3 publications for the associate "habilitation"...etc

From 2008 research and teaching institutions are not distinguished in promotion requirements but their functioning is still quit different., however research professionals lost their career management, and lot of them are requested to get new degrees from the new scheme???? Many senior researchers are disabled from research projects management and from research ideas submission, doctorate students are allowed positions of research team/project chiefs when their colleagues from universities are still students till their thesis dissertation!!! very crazy system..

However some research institutions suffered from promotion planing and/or do not apply for some researchers official requirements for obscure reasons. Higher ministry commission 'CNEC' blocked as well promotion of researchers who have degrees from the 80ith , asking them for new degrees which they couldn't meet without their institution's authorization and planning. A strong waste for the institutions of skills, competencies, experiences, knowledge background etc...

Dear @Fairouz, Thank you for the detailed explanation about the status of the universities. It is very important that the people have tradition of research and research -tradition.

Well said Dear Abedallah, a tradition of research is built through research practices, the experiences acquired in its exercise built a research-tradition. This could be possible only when true researchers and scientists are behind this tradition and consequently are responsible of its policy. So why politicians or people not sufficiently knowledgeable interfere in it??