Sometimes, there are misperceptions when people use academic title in their daily life. For example, many of us are still confusing whether a title of Professor is an academic title or title for job position. I’m sure almost all of us think that Professor is the highest level of an academic title after the PhD. In fact that is absolutely wrong.
In Indonesian academic rule, Professor is not an academic title. It’s just a title for job position or the highest job position in academic institution as well as university or college. Whereas, the doctor or PhD is the highest academic title.
Beside that, the professor title is only allowed for who is not retired yet. So, if one of the professor is not active anymore as an academic job, he/she have to discharge the title.
Different from professor, the PhD title is able to use forever, even he/she has retired or pass away.
Writing The Title
Many people are also confuse and even misuse when they are writing academic title or job title. We often write the complete title between the name start from BSc, Master and until PhD title. For instance, we usually read the long title written like this: Prof. Ir. XXX XXX XXX, M.Sc., Ph.D. It should be written as: Prof. XXX XXX XXX, Ph.D. It’s mean that you must write only the highest academic title.
