There also exist some administrative ranks, held by permanent employees and often elected by their peers, such as university president or dean.
While most civil service roles are only available to citizens of the EU, appointments to these positions are made regardless of citizenship.
In some fields, such as law, management (gestion), and economics, candidates take the competitive examination known as agrégation; only those achieving the highest grades are appointed.
Note that in French, the word professeur is used much more widely than the English "professor", and when used on its own it suggests a schoolteacher in secondary education.
In higher educational establishments outside the university system, such as the École polytechnique, teaching staff follow different hierarchies and career paths.
Since all French universities are state-run, faculty members are civil servants and enjoy increased employment protection compared to the private sector.
The French Ministry of Higher Education and Research provides a comparative table for faculty ranks in France and worldwide.
[4] For example, professeur corresponds to (full) professor in North America and the UK, while maître de conférences corresponds to (tenured) associate professor in North America, or to lecturer/reader/senior lecturer in the UK depending on pay grade and whether the habilitation was obtained or not.
There also exist equivalent ranks as state employees (non civil service) for professors coming from industry and working part-time in a university.
[7] There are two levels, matching those of the teaching-research staff The main differences between these research positions and the faculty positions are, of course, the absence of teaching duties, and the ability to move between different labs (for example, a CNRS researcher can request to move to any CNRS lab in France or abroad, whereas a faculty member is employed by a specific university).
These establishments also offer engineer positions that include a research part, besides more technical duties (e.g. preparation of a database, experimental apparatus, etc.
These institutions of higher education each specialize in a specific domain, such as business, political science, or engineering.
Some of them are grands établissements (for example Sciences Po Paris) are part of the state university recruitment system.
Most are elected positions, with prerogatives and duties described in the statutes of the relevant organization (university, faculty, research lab...).