New tenure-track hopes to attract international academics

In future, assistant professors who are appointed with a special six-year tenure-track plan, and who are assessed as academically qualified under the terms of this plan, will qualify for an associate professorship at UCPH.

”I think tenure-track will improve the University’s position in the global competition to attract top academics, not least because it is a form of appointment familiar to many researchers from universities abroad,” says Prorector Thomas Bjørnholm to KUnet.dk.

The new system supplements open advertisements for associate professorships and replaces the current system, where assistant professors on a tenure-track plan can be made associate professors after only four years. This is rarely done, however, as four years is seen as a short time to qualify for an associate professorship.

Clearer career paths

In addition to introducing a tenure-track system, taking academic staff from assistant-professor to associate-professor level, the negotiations have led to a more explicit distinction between postdoc positions and assistant professorships.

The job structure will now describe the former as separate positions for a maximum of four years and with the main emphasis on research. Unlike an assistant professorship, a postdoc position will not automatically qualify the holder for a future university career.

This new process will take effect on 1 September 2013.