Helen Shiner Apr 13, 2015:

@Jonathan English/American readers who are involved with higher education should know of the term and the German system. I suppose other people just have to look it up on Google, like so many things in life!

Jonathan MacKerron (asker) Apr 13, 2015:

@Helen Thanks for your efforts. Have since spoken with the author and, as it turns out, the reality of how this whole Habilitation 'fuss' in Germany is so complicated that we agreed "habilitation candidate" was the simplest solution, if not the most readily understandable to English readers who are not intimately familiar with said processes.

Helen Shiner Apr 12, 2015:

@Jonathan Since the paths towards a professorship in the US and UK are so different to the German system, you are not going to find an equivalent term in EN. Being a habilitation candidate does not mean you will hold an academic post concurrently (though this is often the case). You can teach in the UK with a Masters degree, though increasingly the requirement is for a PhD. One has to have a PhD to supervise doctoral candidates. In Germany, one has to have done the Habilitation in order to gain a full faculty post and take on doctoral supervision.

Helen Shiner Apr 12, 2015:

@Jonathan I was just commenting on the fact that we posted the same link. I have known quite a few habilitation candidates personally. They all did/are doing different things whilst working towards this qualification. Maybe the discrepancy in the explanation/translation offered by the German universities you have looked at has more to do with what they offer their habilitation candidates, not the qualification per se.

Jonathan MacKerron (asker) Apr 12, 2015:

@Helen The link was to provide some background about the debate in Germany on this topic. I've done lots of research on this and there appears to be no agreed translation, with different German universities interpeting it differently in English on their websites.

Helen Shiner Apr 12, 2015:

@Jonathan Maybe we posted this information at the same time, but Habilitation is habilitation in EN, as the wiki page says.

Jonathan MacKerron (asker) Apr 12, 2015:

Here some general information http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habilitation