<p>I think i would really be good at it, i tutor people all the time, and i am patient when explaining stuff.....</p>
<p>But the pay sucks :(</p>
<p>Well, I don't know if the pay is that bad. Keep in mind that teaching/professing are one of the few jobs left in which you get large blocks of downtime. When you calculate the pay you get divided by the number of hours you actually work, it's actually pretty decent. How many other jobs out there give you the entire summer off? It's one of the only jobs where you can, say, go live in Europe or Australia for 3 months of the year (obviously you wouldn't be living in luxury, but at least you'd be able to live over there for months at a time). </p>
<p>Then there is the issue of tenure, which has to be one of the sweetest deals around. Basically, once you get tenure, you are almost essentially unfire-able. Past that point, as long as you fulfill the minimum requirements of the job, you know that you'll always have a job. This is true of practically nobody else out there. Other people can go above and beyond the call of duty, work extremely hard, do stellar work ... and get fired anyway. Other people may make more money, but then again, they need to - to save money to hold them over for the times when they're unemployed, to move their familiy to another place where they can find another job (if their new employer doesn't offer relocation bennies). Once you get tenure, you got job security that practically nobody else has. You can't overlook the value of that.</p>
<p>goods points, but but u can't really go to europe on a teacher's salary. school teacher that is.</p>
<p>seems like a very stress free job once u taught for a year or so and have all ur lesson plans done.</p>
<p>Why not? Europe isn't that expensive to live in (it is expensive to VACATION in, with hotels and restaurants and all that). </p>
<p>Think about it. Most Europeans make less money than do American teachers, and yet they are obviously able to live in Europe. I'm not talking about living in fancy hotels and all that. I'm talking about renting a small place for 3 months somewhere in Europe. If you're a teacher, you have to live somewhere during the summer anyway, so instead of living in the US and doing nothing, why not live in Europe? Just stop your lease on your apartment in the US, or if you have a house, rent it out for the summer. Then take whatever money you would have had to pay to live during the summer anyway, and use it to live in Europe. It's really not that expensive. You can rent a summer room in London for about 100 pounds per week (hence, about $150 a week). Yeah, you probably won't be living in a glamorous part of town, and the room won't be all that great, but, honestly who cares? You're in London. </p>
<p>Don't believe me? Just 30 seconds of Googling got me this.</p>
<p>And I'm sure if you really search around, you'd be able to find even better deals. Keep in mind that London is one of the most expensive cities in the world. You could choose to live in a less expensive part of Europe and hence spend even less money. </p>
<p>And forget about going to fancy European restaurants. Cook for yourself. Nothing wrong with that - that's how most Europeans eat. </p>
<p>So, you'll be in Europe, living like a European, with one major difference. They have to go to work every day. You don't. So you can spend your whole day hanging around, learning the language and the culture, and whatever. I think that's a pretty good deal. </p>
<p>The only thing I could see that would be expensive is the airfare. However, with all these discount airlines and the proliferation of online travel websites, you are sure to find a good deal if you are persistent. For example, just fiddling around with cheapflights.com, I was able to find roundtrip flights from New York to London for less than $300.</p>
<p>interesting ideas sakky.</p>
<p>Traveling is not really for me.</p>
<p>But other aspects like job security, job opportunities, and the actual teaching do intrgue me quite a bit.</p>
<p>I'll proly c if i can get into a med school or pharm school, if not i'll be happy to spend my life teaching.</p>
<p>Professors get paid beacoup bucks. Teachers also get paid extravagant salaries in the $40,000-$50,000 range. More than enough to vacation in Europe.</p>
<p>Yeah, I want to grow up to be a physics prof.</p>
<p>joe, in Los Angeles, CA a house costs around a milion. 40-50 is not much</p>
<p>The key with teaching is longevity. You may start in the low 30s as a k-12 teacher but stick around and you'll be doing great. The retirement plan is good, plus who wouldn't like to have the entire summer off?? My sis-in-law makes 73000/year teaching kindergarten. She has several weeks of vacation DURING the school year. It's crazy. </p>
<p>Profs in Ohio with PhDs start at 50,000, even at community colleges and there are regular pay increases. Again, you can have summers and holidays off. These positions are very competitive, though. If you are aiming for a 4-yr college you need to be a successful grant writer and be willing to run a lab....then you'll be there over the summer, maybe on holidays and weekends too. Tenure isn't a guaranteed thing either.</p>
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joe, in Los Angeles, CA a house costs around a milion. 40-50 is not much
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<p>Yeah, but that's Los Angeles. Not everybody lives in Los Angeles, you know. The world doesn't revolve around LA, much as people there might want to think so. In most parts of the country, 40-50k is quite a comfortable living, especially when you get large blocks of time off. </p>
<p>I have to say that one of the best deals going is to become a business-school prof (hence, get a doctorate in business administration/management or a related field like finance or accounting). B-school profs tend to be among the most well paid profs at any school, principally because B-schools tend to generate some of the highest profits of any program at any school, and because those with doctorates in business are highly coveted by management-consulting companies and (especially finance PhD's) by Wall Street. Most B-school profs, especially the ones who are tenured, also tend to have highly lucrative consulting or advising gigs on the side, in addition to their faculty salary. And if you ever decide that you really need to make real money, you can always go on leave (or quit entirely) and enter the private sector. It's not a bad deal when you think about it.</p>
<p>Sakky, how much do you think the top Business profs make a yr? 150-200K</p>
<p>A senior I know wants to become a teacher; he'll be attending Princeton in the Fall.</p>
<p>Different kinds of professors have different jobs. The professor at the community college or liberal arts college mainly teaches, so in many ways s/he is like a high school teacher, only teaching more advanced material to older (and hopefully, smarter, more self-motivated, more interested) students. </p>
<p>In contrast, the professor at the big, prestigious research university--your Berkeleys and Harvards--isn't hired to teach as much as to research. These professors spend much of their time in labs, centers, and institutes writing proposals to get funding to conduct research. Often these professors don't get their summers "off"; the summer is seen as a time when they don't have to deal with pesky undergrads and can focus on doing research with their graduate students and postdocs.</p>
<p>And while it's true that being a tenured professor, even one at a research university, is a pretty cushy job, the trick is getting tenured--getting a tenure track job is pretty hard in and of itself (every year, too many Ph.D.s graduate and too few old professors die), and getting tenure is very hard, especially at research schools. </p>
<p>At liberal arts colleges and community colleges, getting tenure is largely based on the perceived quality of teaching. Some tenure committees get pretty political--if the department chair and a few other important professors like you, you get tenure, but if they don't, you get to pack your bags. This subjectivity in tenure committees isn't unique to teaching colleges, but subjectivity is a bigger deal when evaluating "teaching quality" rather than research--the MacArthur Fellow isn't going to be denied tenure regardless of the department chair's disapproval.</p>
<p>At the research universities, tenure is primarily based on quality of research, with teaching sort of an afterthought. Assistant professors (professors on the tenure track who don't have tenure) often work 80 hour weeks for the four or five years it normally takes to make associate professor (associate professors have tenure; once you're an associate professor, you're basically guaranteed to become a full professor eventually). Of course, if you're a genius and publish breakthrough paper after breakthrough paper, you can get your full professorship in a year or two. </p>
<p>This isn't to say that being a good teacher won't help with getting tenure at research schools. Sometimes being a great teacher can land you a full professorship--an excellent teacher and average researcher has a shot at tenure. Sometimes excellent teachers will become "lecturers with security of employment"--basically, professors who aren't called "professor" and aren't required to do substantive research, but for all intents and purposes have the same cushy, unfireable jobs as professors.</p>
<p>Pay scales vary. </p>
<p>Here's a general rule of thumb: the more money the field makes out in the real world, the more money the professor maeks, in order to attract the best and brightest to the university and away from AT&T or Jones Day.</p>
<p>Medical school, law school, and business school professors get paid the most. Their pay is usually pretty close to working "in industry"--$100k at least.</p>
<p>Engineering professors are probably up there, too, depending on the field. Computer scientists and electrical engineers almost certainly are among the top paid.</p>
<p>Science professors' pay spans the spectrum. Ecologists don't make much, but the pharmocological chemist or materials scientist can make a lot.</p>
<p>The social scientists probably make the next most. Economists might make a lot too, depending on what field of economics (financial economics vs. economic history, for example).</p>
<p>The humanities and arts professors make the least.</p>
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<p>Yeah, but that's Los Angeles. Not everybody lives in Los Angeles, you know.
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<p>haha, i do and i love it and have no plans to move whatsoever unless a girl would ask me to.</p>
<p>i honestly would only consider teaching at HS or maybe community college.</p>
<p>The main reason i would consider going into teaching is my passion for trying to actually "teach" and develop one on one relationships w/ my students which would help them do better.</p>
<p>Thats what i usually do when i tutor, i try to cator to their learning styles and abilities. </p>
<p>I would never wanna lecture in front of 200 students.</p>
<p>I've had some horrible teachers in my life, i feel i could do much much better.</p>
<p>Job security is all very fine but you have to keep in mind that getting tenure is TOUGH... academia has taken the Publish or Perish syndrome entirely too far</p>
<p>um, i don't know in LA there is high demand for HS teachers, ESPECIALLY science and math teacher. The two subjects that i tutor in.</p>
<p>To get tenure in most school districts is around 2-5 years.</p>
<p>Not a big problem</p>
<p>Not sure how Univ system works.</p>
<p>I was talking about the Univ system</p>
<p>Jim97, for the super B-school profs at the top B-schools? I would say your figures are an absolute bare minimum, and in fact, I would actually say it's probably 250k at a minimum. Remember, I'm talking about the top profs at the top-B-schools. Also keep in mind that that's just your faculty salary. Star B-school faculty make substantially more than that off consulting and speaking fees. </p>
<p>Now I do agree completely that as a college professor, getting tenure, especially at a big-league university is extremely difficult and takes an extraordinary amount of work. But honestly, you have to look at the alternatives. Think of all the other "high-powered" career tracks out there. Don't they also take an extraordinary amount of work to make it to the top also? For example, if you want to make partner at a big-time law firm, you have to work like a dog. If you want to become a doctor, then you have to go through the hell of all those years of medical school and medical training. If you want to make it in Wall Street banking, you're going to be working like a dog. If you get into a management consulting company like McKinsey, you're going to be in brutal competition to get promoted up the ranks, not dissimilar to the whole publish-or-perish world of academia. The same thing is true if you join a big company and you want to move up. For example, if you join GE or Microsoft and you want to climb the ladder of management, you're going to be working like a dog and the competition for promotion is going to be fierce. If you just want to join those companies to do a simple job where you're content to just do your job and you have no expectations beyond that, that's one thing. But if you go to those companies expecting to rise up the ranks, you know you're in for a lot of work. The same thing is true if you join a Silicon Valley technology startup - those guys are notorious for working 90+ hours a week. </p>
<p>The point is, I don't see that the lifestyle of newly minted PhD's trying to get tenure as being all that different from the lifestyles of ambitious people in other career tracks who are trying to make it to the top. Either way, you end up working massive amounts of hours under brutal and stressful competition. So what's the difference?</p>
<p>highschoolda, </p>
<p>LAUSD has high demand for math and science teachers. pay is decent... however, they have this one program where you're in school part-time (doing teacher training) and teaching part-time (at a LAUSD school), and those who finish that program are in high demand and the principals of the better LAUSD schools will probably fight for you. i forgot what the program is called though, but i know it's free. UCLA also has a teacher training program of equivalent value/prestige, but you'll have to pay tuition and you won't be doing any part-time teaching while you're in school. also for high school teachers, you have to get a credential and also pass a couple exams (i believe CBEST is one of them). professors on the other hand, don't require such a teaching credential. also, you can teach high school with a bachelor's degree, but being a community college professor probably requires at least a master's, and being a professor at a university requires a PhD.</p>