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Neither of the people in this photograph are qualified for an academic job (see also "Professor" Bill Shorten). I like Ardern a lot, and creating a role using her experience for mentoring is great, but hospitals don't say "we've hired Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman to do heart surgeries this month."

"But Mark Scott is an administrator, so it's appropriate for him to be VC" - ok: make him Chief of Army then. I'm sure he'll do a great job. Oh what's that? You can't just plunk a civilian with no military training at the head of an ADF branch? That's something you have to earn?

Mark Scott could have used his admin skills in the traditional role of Bursar of course. (But I guess *Vice Chancellor and President Professor* has a better ring to it.)

(We could go the other way and introduce elaborate titles and ranks for the ABC)

(Real talk: the use of the "CEO model" in essentially all organisations regardless of their purpose is bad in many circumstances.)

I recall about 15 years ago a State Branch Secretary of a big union started calling themselves "CEO" much to the amusement of their colleagues. (Not coincidentally, the person also had "Adjunct Associate Professor, Uni of X" on their business card until the institution sent a polite email.....)

Worked for a faculty in a G8 uni back in the day and the amount of time spent on appointing and renewing adjuncts was insane.

(Did some advisory body / talks stuff in a G8 and this got raised. I said “thanks, don’t need it, get me a library log in and I’m yours.” This was not possible. The *solution* proposed was we pretended I was a casual employee and did the HR enrolment. I declined and just did the helping.)

Deakin had to ask Cliev to stop referring to himself as "professor". He was once an adjunct of some sort with the business school.