<p>yeah kfc4u, i heard of that program too, it pays 37K w/ a bachelors degree. </p>
<p>My friend went to some program at csun where she got a MS in teaching which increased her salary. Tuition is required, but thats proly best for future.</p>
<p>Do u know how pay is at private schools?</p>
<p>I'm interested in teaching either at the HS level or possibly in a college or university. The problem with academia is that 55% of PhD. graduates are unable to find work at a uni. My plan is to get my PhD. either way. In Broward County, FL, teachers get a yearly bonus of $3,000.00 for earning an MA, and $6,700.00 for earning a PhD. Without any extra certifications, it would take 20 years before reaching the $60,000.00 per year mark. Besides, teaching is one of the few professions where extra degrees will directly result in increased wages...might as well make the most of the opportunities.</p>
<p>karma, what subject ?</p>
<p>I'm studying English. So, getting a job in a university would be especially difficult for me. By the time I earn my PhD. though, I'd probably be making good money as a teacher. How much do entering tenure-track faculty make at unis (in the humanities)? Would I have to take a pay cut to make the move?</p>
<p>Please do not pursue a teaching career simply because you think it will be easy or lucrative. Teachers will tell you that the job can be satisfying enough to compensate for the costs, but I've ever met a teacher who considers it "cushy," as a previous poster put it.</p>
<p>School teaching means struggling to work with students of widely varying abilities simultaneously - how do you plan a lesson to meet the needs of some kids who are reading two years ahead of grade level and some who are reading two years behind? Many schoolchildren resent having to be there, and some will hate you or hate everything in general. Teachers not only have to instruct their students in academic material, but also (for elementary and middle levels) have to help students overcome learning disabilities, bad social habits, English proficiency, and discipline issues. They have to deal with parents who disagree with how they handle their classrooms and how their children are evaluated. School districts are in constant threat of being sued. What teachers do in front of their classes is the visible side of teaching, but that is only the tip of the iceberg. Teaching involves a great deal of bureaucratic tracking and documenting of student progress. Further, those school districts that have teacher shortages usually have them for a reason. Inner city, high-crime, low-graduation schools have far more openings than posh suburban privileged institutions, where there is often quite strong competition.</p>
<p>College teaching spots are even more difficult. PhDs are required for almost any college position. PhDs are expensive, frequently take a decade to complete, and require intese self discipline. Moreover, students usually have to have achieved very good undergrad grades, top test scores, and serious research before they could be accepted into a good grad school. Competition for grad school spots is intense. Competition for college teaching positions is intense (especially in your field). Competition for research grants is intense. </p>
<p>So after four years of Bachelors work and debt and ten years of graduate work and debt students receive their doctorates and begin the long hard struggle to secure a tenure-track position. Many, many of the people described as "college professors" in statistics are actually adjunct instructors, which means they are part-time, given undesirable projects, have no job security or medical benefits, and are paid very very little. Adjuncts at the first school I attended were paid $2500 per course. Four courses constitute full time work, so working full time both semesters an adjunct could only bring in $20,000 a year to cover both living expenses and payments toward their college debt. However, most adjunct teachers cannot secure all four courses at a single institution and end up cobbling together work from several colleges or have to find some other part time job in addition. </p>
<p>Hopefully the young instructor will eventually get a tenure-track job, but that's not necessarily the end of the struggle. Tenure requires a great deal of work even at small low-prestige colleges, and at major research schools it can be a nightmare. In addition to preparing and presenting lectures, holding office hourse, supervising grad students, meeting prospective students, attending all manner of department meetings and serving on university committees, the instructors must work at their research and publications constantly. They need to stay politically well connected in their field and present at conferences. Forget about vacationing in Europe - that time is for research and grantwriting. My advisor has had neither summers nor any other major chunk of time off for vacationing in the six years since she entered this tenure-track job, and she is only an assistant prof at this point. All this is in addition to coming up with decent lecture plans, doing or overseeing homework grading, staying current with developments in the field. Also, one misconception about tenure: while tenured profs usually can count on a job for what remains of their employable lives, administrators can get around this barrier to firing them by eliminating their positions. All tenure means is that the person is guaranteed that position for as long as it exists. For this reason, some profs prefer rolling two-year contracts to tenure because at least it guarantees them a job for two years.</p>
<p>good post Mary.</p>
<p>But those dilemas that u talked about w/ HS teaching are my passions and something i want to deal w/ and feel i can do well.</p>
<p>No one said being a teacher was "cushy." One poster claimed that a tenured job in a university is a "cushy" position, but then went on to echo your caution that tenure was difficult to obtain.</p>
<p>I hope you didn't interpret my comment about "good money" to mean that I thought teaching was a lucrative profession. What I meant to say was that by the time I can earn a PhD. and become eligible for a position as a professor, I will already be far along on the pay scale for a teacher. Making the switch from HS to college could require a drop in wages.</p>
<p>Also, my post about bonuses was only to stress how essential it is to earn advanced degrees as a teacher, because base pay is simply not enough.</p>
<p>Also, how is a PhD. expensive? I'm pretty sure that being accepted into a PhD. program comes with funding. And tenure may not mean guaranteed job security, it's more than most employees have...</p>
<p>Most of what you say is true, but I don't think anyone on this board thinks the road to tenure is an easy one, nor do they think teaching will earn them millions.</p>
<p>A PhD is expensive because of the opportunity cost. I believe that for the most part, those in PhD programs at top schools could have gone to high paying management consulting jobs or somesuch out of undegrad. Think of the lost money - putting your life on hold, etc.</p>
<p>Well, I don't know about that. To even get hired at a management consulting job, you need a certain personality and a certain look (those in MC should know exactly what I'm talking about), and let's just say that it's far far different from the personality and look that most aspiring academics have. The point is, it's certainly not automatic by any means. Believe me, management consulting companies reject BOATLOADS of people with perfect grades, because they didn't have the right look (and yet at the same time will hire people whose commitment to academics was rather dubious, but had the right look). </p>
<p>I would also have to come back to my idea of getting a PhD in business. Think of it this way. Let's say you get a PhD in business, but then you can't get a decent tenure-track assistant job. Then you can just turn around and get a job in consulting or, especially if your PhD was in finance/accouting, in banking. [Some of you might be thinking that I just said that you need the right look to get into consulting, but as I explained, if you don't have the right look, then you were never going to be hired as a consultant after undergrad anyway, so that means you're not really losing much by getting your PhD] By getting into consulting/banking right after your PhD, you'd be coming in at the associate level - the same level as those who just got their MBA's. </p>
<p>So consider the two lifestyle tracks. #1 - you get your PhD in business, and make a small stipend during those 4-5 years (most PhD business programs are last 5 years or less). #2 - you go to consulting/banking right after undergrad, make good money for 2-3 years, but then using it all up in getting your MBA. Hence, it seems to me that it's a wash. </p>
<p>Furthermore, if you get into a PhD business program and you find out you really don't like the academic lifestyle, if you play your cards right, you may be able to swing a 'consolation MBA'. That's not a bad deal. </p>
<p>I do agree with you that quite a lot of profs end up as gypsy lecturers or in other such adjunct positions. To that, I would say that if you find yourself in that position, you should know that you're probably not going to land tenure. If you still want to teach, then keep doing what you're doing, but you ought to know that you're not going to make it to the promised land. It's like all those guys who get hired into investment banking or management consulting and quickly realize that it's not for them. Or the guy fresh out of law school who joins a big-league law firm and quickly realizes that he doesn't have what it takes to make partner. In all of these cases, clearly a change is probably in order. That adjunct lecturer should then start looking into getting into management consulting, if he has the look (and, again, if he doesn't have the look, then he didn't really give anything up by getting his PhD anyway). </p>
<p>The point is, I'm not sure I can drum up a whole lot of sympathy for those gypsy scholars. They choose to stay. They are free to leave academia and get 'regular' jobs anytime they want. Not everybody gets to make it to the top, whether it's in academia, or consulting, or banking, or any other field. If you degrees are in something marketable like engineering, accounting, finance, computer science, or whatever, then you should be able to find yourself at least a half-decent job in the private sector. If you choose to study something that is not marketable, well...</p>
<p>However, as far as teachers (not profs, but teachers) is concerned, the rules vary from state to state, but generally, a teacher can expect to get tenured in 3-5 years, and after that, the teacher is basically unfireable. And at that point, I would say that the job is pretty easy. It's not terribly lucrative, but it is pretty easy. Again, I would point to the very large blocks of time that teachers get off - and teachers don't do research during the summer, so that summer is all theirs. Furthermore, as a teacher, you are practically unfireable, which is something that millions of Americans wish was true of their jobs. I agree that if you're dedicated to becoming a good teacher, then yes, it is hard. But if you don't really care, if you're happy just to coast, then I would say that it's a pretty easy job. Yes, you're going to get annoying kids who don't want to be there, and parents who give you garbage, but if you know that you're not going to be fired unless you do something egregious, and you're content in just doing the bare minimum to keep yourself from getting fired, then it's a pretty easy job. In most jobs, if you do the bare minimum required, you are probably going to get fired. Heck, at most jobs, you could be the best worker in the whole company and STILL get fired. The point is, that job security that tenured teachers have is a very sweet deal.</p>
<p>I agree with sakky regarding the job security teachers have, which translates into somewhat higher rates of mediocre teachers than in professions where there are higher levels of accountability. Now, there are still superstars, but there are teachers who are not going to get fired because they are the worse 10% of teachers at a school. They are never going to lose their jobs, and even if they did, they could get re-hired immediately. In fact, the current teacher shortage in the U.S., combined with the lack of resources to increase teacher salary, means that if you can handle the low salary, you basically have no competition.</p>
<p>Now - the look. I have to say that most graduate students do not know about the look they need when interviewing for that tenure-track assistantship either! And yet if you go to an MLA conference and ask ABDs what they are concerned about, it is the look. I would say that many who do not have the tenure-track look to begin with acquire it.</p>
<p>So can the same not be said for management consulting? (This is more a socratic inquiry than a rhetorical question.)</p>
<p>Well, I would argue that 'the look' required to get a tenure-track academic position is far different from 'the look' required to succeed in management consulting. I know plenty plenty plenty of tenure-track profs who could never get hired by an MC to save their lives. </p>
<p>But how about the notion of 'acquiring the look' (whatever the look is for a particular profession)? Well, I would say that that may be easier for those going into academia. That is because aspiring academics have years in order to learn and acquire the look. They are around all these other people who either have the look or are trying to acquire it. Contrast that with trying to get into MC. You study for 4 years as an undergrad, and then, you have to almost instantly acquire the look for your MC interview? That's a tall order. The only way I could see it is if you go to an elite B-school and get your MBA, which does give you 2 years surrounded by other former and future consultants, so you have 2 years to acquire the look. But of course that means you have to actually get admitted to an elite B-school, which almost always means you have to have strong work experience, and the sum total of getting (and keeping) a good job followed by getting admitted into an elite B-school is comparable to getting into and completing an elite PhD program.</p>
<p>I would also add something about those gypsy scholars. I don't want to sound cold-hearted, but I do have to ask why do they keep doing what they're doing? I can understand that if you don't get yourself a tenure-track assistant prof job right after getting your PhD, you might be tempted to take some of those adjunct/lecturer positions so that you can hang around academia and hopefully get yourself on the tenure-track. But after a few years of that, you gotta realize that tenure track is not in the cards. Come on, these PhD's are not stupid, so after a few years of bouncing around as a gypsy scholar, they gotta know what's up. So why don't they become teachers (i.e. high school teachers) themselves, and get tenure that way? Since they obviously already got their bachelor's degree and they obviously know their subject matter extremely well, then it should be a relatively simple thing for them to get certified as a teacher. Usually, it just involves joining one of those 'teacher-internship' programs where they teach and complete their state-certification coursework at the same time. And I believe there are some states where all you need to do to get certified is to pass some subject matter exams, and if you hold a PhD, those should pose little problem. </p>
<p>Obviously being a teacher is not as glamorous as being a tenure-track prof. But hey, it's a whole lot better than being a gypsy lecturer. At some point when you realize you're not going to land a tenure-track position, you gotta cut your losses. If you refuse to do that, well, not to be harsh, but you only have yourself to blame.</p>
<p>I think it is because people who have gone through so much schooling genuinely love what they are studying and want to make a contribution to what they they study and are willing to continue as a, as you call it, "gypsy professor."</p>
<p>"Do u know how pay is at private schools?"</p>
<p>not as familiar, but private high schools tend to pay higher because they are able to charge tuition, and the majority of them tend to be in suburban, higher socio-economic status areas. the difference though, is that you may be required to teach multiple (similar) subjects. for example, a history teacher might have to teach some world history, some US history, a period of govt, and maybe help coach the academic decathlon team, etc. although i think the upside to this is that you might be able to create your own curriculum instead of following a district prescribed one. but this is only stuff i've heard, so perhaps someone can confirm for me.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I think it is because people who have gone through so much schooling genuinely love what they are studying and want to make a contribution to what they they study and are willing to continue as a, as you call it, "gypsy professor."
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Exactly right, but then that's get back to what I've been saying before - that it's hard to generate a whole lot of sympathy for them, because, like you said, they choose that lifestyle for themselves. Nobody is forcing them to do it, they choose to do it. Furthermore, this seriously calls into question those gypsy scholars who then complain about their lifestyle. Hey, if you really don't like it, then quit. Go become a high school teacher like I suggested, or do whatever. The point is, if you really don't like doing something, then why do you keep doing it?</p>
<p>Private schools teachers generally earn less than public school teachers.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.collegegrad.com/employment/teacheremployment.shtml%5B/url%5D">http://www.collegegrad.com/employment/teacheremployment.shtml</a>
(Almost all the way down, under "Earnings")</p>
<p>Right - and I know some adjuncts who are perfectly happy adjuncting - they have come to terms with their non-tenure, and adjuncting is still better for them than changing jobs.</p>
<p>However, I think that the crux of the argument is that there is such as a difference between the occupations of high school teacher and professor. It does not attract the same type of people - and most of these complaining adjuncts never thought they would have to 'resort' to something like becoming a high school teacher. They were fed pipe dreams that the PhD would lead to eventual success, and that is not true. </p>
<p>Also, I think the nature of the PhD itself has something to do with things. It is also a pre-professional degree - it teaches you how to be a college professor, period (at least in humanities and some social sciences, which is where the vast majority of adjuncts are).</p>
<p>RE: private vs. public school earnings - you really have to consider which private school or public school. I'd bet that a teacher at Thomas Jefferson Sci/Tech or Stuyvesant isn't doing that badly, and is quite competent. Much better than some no-name parochail private school. The same however, is true for teachers at Exeter or Andover, compared to public school teachers at some inner-city underfunded public school.</p>
<p>About 'the look' again. I think this is an interesting topic. This reminds me of the decades-long documentary project 'Seven Up,' in which the lives of British private school children, starting at age 7, were followed every 7 years. Sakky, what age do you think you could pick out a precursor to 'the look?' I realize that this question is loaded with logical holes, but I think this could be an interesting thing to pursue on this forum, as it is a very undiscussed aspect of success/career, whatever.</p>
<p>Also - one person goes through the prep-school lifestyle, complete with squash expertise, etc. Much more likely to have the look than if a hypothetical separated identical twin?</p>
<p>Look, what I'm saying is that I know my high school could have really used some teachers who really really knew their subject matter, and certainly those adjunct gypsies know their subject matter quite well - far better than the average high school teacher. I'm sure that my high school was non unusual - I don't know too many high schools that couldn't use some more teachers who knew their subject deeply. </p>
<p>And you say that a lot of those frustrated gypsy profs were fed a line that their PhD was going to lead them to great success and that they never thought they would have to resort to being a high school teacher. Yeah, that's true, but on the other hand, I'm sure they never thought they would have to resort to being gypsy scholars either. The point is, at some point, you gotta face reality. You gotta come to grips with the fact that you're not going to make it as a tenured prof, and you then gotta figure out what your alternatives are. If you are fine with being a gypsy scholar, then that's perfectly fine. But if you're not happy with that, and you also realize that you're not going to make it to tenure, then you gotta figure out what you wanna do with your life. </p>
<p>Look, the fact is, most people don't get to do what they really want to do. That's life. I'd love to be playing for the Boston Red Sox, but at some point, I realized that I have no baseball talent. Most people have to do things they don't really want to do in order to put food on the table and provide for their family. That's reality. Those complaining gypsy scholars ought to admit to themselves that tenure is probably not in the cards and if they don't want to be a gypsy for the rest of the lives, they have to figure out something else to do. It's painful, I know, but that's life. If you can't candidly admit to yourself what the reality of the situation is, then I don't know what to tell you. Lots of people have to change careers because their initial career doesn't work out. I don't see why people with PhD's should expect to be treated any differently. </p>
<p>I think 'the look' is picked up in high school or perhaps just before high school. You remember all the clique-ishness of high school, and how people were more socially successful or less socially successful/ There were the 'cool' high school kids, and then everybody else who wanted to be like the 'cool' kids. The fact is, if you weren't 'cool' in high school, it's going to be very hard for you to become 'cool' later in life, and 'coolness' is precisely what management consulting companies are looking for. They want the handsome tall guy who dresses well and can talk confidently and smoothly (in other words, is 'cool') , or the gorgeous woman who can also talk smoothly and confidently. That's part of the 'game' of management consulting. If your personality in high school is that of a shy wallflower who lacks confidence and public-speaking skills, it is extremely difficult to become 'cool' later. Not impossible, but pretty darn hard.</p>
<p>I agree with the fact that adjuncts should come to terms with reality. The fact of the matter is, the days of expect a cushy job after getting a PhD are over. It looks like the market for college professors is devolving into the 19th century market for non-tenured 'tutors.' That's fine.</p>
<p>However, I'm not sure that high school teaching is the best outlet for these people. Sure, there is a surplus of personnel in the one and an excess of personnel in the other, but that doesn't mean that this is what they should do.</p>
<p>Longshoreman, Boston Red Sox starter - jeez, what alternative careers you've had, sakky! Is it too private to know what you actually are doing right now? Just curious.</p>
<p>About 'the look.' So maybe the ability to win a high school election is a ~ gauge or predictor? There seriously needs to be an econometric study of this. (But it would probably be by an academic, like Larry Summers, who most definitely did not have the look. ;) )</p>
<p>Well, if you got a better suggestion for what all these excess PhD's should be doing, I'm all ears. However, I think we can both agree that the present situation - with so many of them working as adjunct lecturers - is not optimal. Having them work as high-school teachers may not be optimal either, but I think it's better than what's going on now. </p>
<p>The ability to win a high school election is indeed a gauge or predictor. The fact is, consulting (and also banking, sales, marketing - basically any profession where you have to interact and communicate with people a lot) are dominated by 'cool' people. Former athletes, for example, tend to enjoy unusual success in these professions. The fact is, you can go to any management consulting firm and notice how almost everybody looks like they stepped out of a fashion magazine. There are very few people there who you would say are truly ugly or badly dressed. When you talk to them, you will note that everybody seems extroverted, poised and self-assured. Very few of them (in fact, almost none) are shy and inarticulate. This is a far cry from many academics who are shy, inarticulate, badly dressed, unattractive etc. Don't believe it? Come on down to, say, MIT or Caltech and you will find some fairly unattractive, badly dressed, and inarticulate people. Some of these guys haven't showered in several months.</p>