Is it now the norm for college students to call professors by their first names?

[Anonymous]

My daughter told me that at her school everyone calls professors by their first names. This really surprises me. When I graduated back in the stone ages 30 years ago, we always addressed them by Dr. Is this how it is at most universities now?

[Anonymous]

It’s rude

[Anonymous]

Only in Lifetime movies titled "Abducted by my Professor" or "My Professor's Passion".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s rude

Not if it’s the professor’s request

[Anonymous]

If professor requests it that’s fine, but in undergrad it’s not typical unless referring to a graduate assistant or teaching assistant. It is viewed as rude unless you’re in a grad level lab or something where you’re working 1:1 with them daily and it’s a natural progression. In graduate school it’s a very different protocol and you switch between first, last, first and last dependent upon the situation.

[Anonymous]

Really? I am 47 and called most of my profs by first name!

[Anonymous]

When I was a TA, back in the dark ages of the 2000s, undergrads called me by my first name and the profs by Professor X. We graduate students called the teaching profs (the ones we knew only because we were teaching for them) by title within earshot of the undergrads, and possibly by first name if we got to know them well after a while. We called all the PIs or professors of our own research departments, for whose labs we worked, by their first names, since research labs are very egalitarian by nature and we were with them many hours of every day.

But I know some professors like to be called by their first names by all the students. That's fine. Students must start with the title, and wait to be told to use the first name. That's just common courtesy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s rude

Not if it’s the professor’s request

This.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s rude

Not if it’s the professor’s request

This.

But that is unusual in my experience, outside of the arts.

[Anonymous]

I graduated from a SLAC in 1995 and called most professors by their first names, at their request. My kid is at a large university and calls all professors “Professor” or “Dr.”. I think it’s a campus by campus characteristic, not so much a factor of now vs. then.

[Anonymous]

My department goes by first names as a rule but we do so intentionally to mimic the workplace environment (studio setting). I remind new students this is NOT the case for their professors in other departments. If a student wants to use an honorific that's fine, but they certainly don't need to.

[Anonymous]

Prof here. Most UGs never call me (or any prof I know) by their first names. Everyone once in a while, someone calls me Professor Firstname or Dr. Firstname, and I don't stop them. (Often an international students and I wonder if they got it mixed up.)

Grad students often call me by first name, though I don't encourage it. (In fact, I don't put my first name on the syllabus.)

BUT... if your kid is at a school with a lot of PhD students teaching classes, this would be common. You can't call them Dr. So-and-so and it's sort of inappropriate (though often done) to still call them Professor (you can technically be a Professor without a PhD so it's okay but awkward). So PhD students often go by first names.

[Anonymous]

I had almost all professors close to retirement age so I would have found it weird to call them by their first name.

I had one professor that was younger but I never called him anything. He made me nervous the way he always overlooked my mistakes and I always received As. The last day of class he asked me out. I didn’t go.

[Anonymous]

My kid at Oberlin calls many of his professors by their first name. It’s the community standard— not something he just started doing. Seems strange to me, but it’s part of the schools non-hierarchical/collaborative ethos.

And before the resident Oberlin hater chimes in, do you want to know one college without encampments, protest zones, a police presence, arrests, or significant issues between Muslim and Jewish students right now? Where students are discussing the issues and not causing chaos? If you guessed Oberlin, you’d be right.
Instead, the students are doing things like this:


https://www.ideastream.org/race-gender-identity/2024-04-22/as-the-israel-hamas-war-rages-can-oberlin-college-students-revive-a-kosher-halal-dining-co-op

Collaborative. Rational discussion. As I said, I don’t always “gret” it, but I’d rather my kid be at Oberlin right now than most other US colleges.

[Anonymous]

At my institution it varies by discipline, but we professors tend to be "Dr. Lastname" for those who have PhDs, "Prof. Lastname" for those who do not. TAs are "Mr./Mrs./Ms./Miss/Mx. Lastname" or "Firstname" according to their own preference.

There's a wonderful little ritual upon the conferral of the PhD where the former student shakes hands with their advisor for the first time and the advisor says, "Congratulations, and please call me 'Firstname' now. Welcome to the profession," or something similar. It's a joyful moment for all concerned.