Anyone else want to be a professor?

Graduate School
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<p>My son is a humanities student who would love to be a prof. (Art History). He must get his masters first which will probably cost around $50K and hopefully would get his PhD mostly paid for. However, from everything we are reading it looks pretty dismal after you graduate. The profs he has now absolutely love him & want him to go on (saying that he will be successful), but at the same time are all having difficulties with tenure or are being transferred all the time.</p>

<p>How do you know if it is worth the cost & time at the end of the day?</p>

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<p>Honestly, if you're asking the question and not him, then that's already a bad sign.</p>

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<p>I might become a professor, they make great money... at some good state universities, they can make like $50,000 starting out and upwards of $100,000 after gaining experience.</p>

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<p>He doesn't need to get a separate master's degree. He can apply straight to the PhD level.</p>

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<p>This website has a specific place for graduate studies as well. There is a sticky that explains general graduate school issues, you might want to read that. It contains lots of information about the realities of the academic career path.</p>

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<p>tenisghs - Yes, you can go specifically to a PhD program but in his case a Masters is required in his field before getting your PhD (in most cases). There are several schools (Columbia) where you can apply for your PhD first, but if they don't have what you are studying then it doesn't do much good to go that route.</p>

<p>mcv - profs can make good money, but it usually takes years to get to that point. Again I am sure it depends upon your field. The art history field right now is oversaturated with art history grads.</p>

<p>GP - since we are helping our son financially I think it there is nothing wrong with this question & if you don't have helpful advice why even leave a comment?</p>

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GP - since we are helping our son financially I think it there is nothing wong with this question & if you don't have helpful advice why even leave a comment?

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<p>It is helpful advice. I've seen many people go through graduate school who are coddled - their parents pay for everything, they're used to having their bills paid by someone else, they live in college dorms, etc. </p>

<p>Those people are crushed the first time they send out a paper for review and it is torn to shreds. Then they drop out of school because they're not emotionally equipped to handle the reality of academia. And trust me: Academia is a much, much harsher environment than industry. </p>

<p>With that said, if you're asking these questions, I'm willing to bet he's not emotionally equipped to handle academia. Maybe he'll develop those skills in the next few years, but probably not.</p>

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profs can make good money, but it usually takes years to get to that point. Again I am sure it depends upon your field. The art history field right now is oversaturated with art history grads.

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<p>Not necessarily. Finance professors start in the $160,000 / 10 month range. With summer support, that's $192,000 to start.</p>

<p>Obviously, engineering, math, and science start lower (because their salaries are supplemented with grants), and humanities start much lower (limited opportunities outside of academia). </p>

<p>But it's not about the salary, it's about the lifestyle.</p>

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<p>"With that said, if you're asking these questions, I'm willing to bet he's not emotionally equipped to handle academia. Maybe he'll develop those skills in the next few years, but probably not."</p>

<p>LOL</p>

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<p>How about you get your PhD, then you can laugh at me. Just because it's not what you want to hear doesn't make it incorrect.</p>

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<p>Perhaps this thread has gotten a little too personal, and a bit off-topic.</p>

<p>Art History is a difficult field. That isn't to say that if someone is bright and motivated, he couldn't do well for himself--it's like anything else--but that it's exceedingly competitive and few jobs exist outside academia. He must be prepared to dig a fairly substantial hole of debt of which he'll eventually work himself out--but it will require dedication and a lot of hard work. Would he be alright not being a professor, but still working in the field? A curator of some minor museum? An assistant of some sort?</p>

<p>Is your son out of undergrad yet? I know it may not be what anyone wants to hear, but it may be best to take a year or two off. I was convinced I wanted to be a professor while I was an undergrad, and after taking a year off to teach, I found my calling in another realm. I can't say it's always like that, but what if your son ends up feeling the same way...except he's already plunked down over $30,000 for tuition and feels obligated to continue only for financial reasons. That's the rub. Honestly, I love being in school. Loved every second of learning stuff. But my perspective changed a little after getting more experience. What work experiences does your son have?</p>

<p>As for the coddling part...it isn't meant as a slight, and the poster perhaps worded it poorly. What you should glean from that is your son appears to have not been in dire straits before--many of us have not--and the pressure of grad work and criticism can often be crushing.</p>

<p>A lot to consider here. Ask some of these questions and get back to us. We're here to help--honest.</p>

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<p>just for a bit of realism: finance professors (and engineering professors) tend to make much more than any other faculty on campus-up to two-fold higher rates of pay. This reflects the competition to keep able people in academia rather than in for profit alternative career paths open to these specialities.</p>

<p>Art History doctorates do not have as many job opportunities and their faculty salaries are in line with the "traditional" liberal art fields. When considering being a professor, your son should consider his motivation. At most leading universities, being a professor is more about full immersion into research with some teaching. It is not a 9-5 career. Rather it is more a way of life!</p>

<p>I concur with previous posters, that your son may wish to get more "real-world" experience in his potential field of choice before taking on massive loans.</p>

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<p>Listen I am not sure why this thread turned into a personal thing. All I wanted to know is why or how other people who want to become professors decide whether it is worth it & if they are thinking about taking the risk of additional debt and then taking a job that might not pay much because you can't get a job. I did NOT asked to be psycho analyzed or be told that my son was coddled, etc. I don't understand either why we are talking about the stress of grad school. Anyone that would even consider grad school knows that it can be stressful to say the least.</p>

<p>I appreciate the advice of not going on to grad school right after graduating. When my son told his prof's that he was thinking about taking a year off they were absolutely mortified that he would even be thinking about it. They all felt that it was not a good thing to do although they didn't say why other than alluding to that it might be easier to get into a top program while you are fresh out of your undergrad degree.</p>

<p>Thankfully, HE has some time to decide what he wants to do before he accepts or declines his admissions. On that subject, what if he gets into a top school in his field & he now turns them down. How likely would he be to be accepted at a later date?</p>

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<p>Why does it matter if his mom is asking about it? Different sets of parents have different levels of involvement, but I don't see how this reflects at all on the son's academic abilities. G.P. Burdell, hate to say it but you come across as a jerk.</p>

<p>Now as for your question, mom2ofOH, I'll answer it as best as I can. I study neuroscience but I've read a lot about humanities grad school (several close friends who are interested in it) so I know more than the average person. Of course, others will probably have varying perspectives, but I imagine that's why you asked here...</p>

<p>The conclusion I've reached is if you want to study the humanities, your motivation for doing so should be 99% self-interest and 1% career. And by this, I mean you should really only do it if spending 8 years studying some obscure subject is a sufficient reward in itself. Chances are, you <em>will not</em> graduate with any career prospects whatsoever.</p>

<p>I think it's very risky to get involved in one specific subject area for so long, then to be forced out of it by the realities of finding a job, etc. when you graduate. I've read that in many cases, this can lead to disillusionment and depression (understandably). Yet when most humanities grad students are asked whether the Ph.D. was worth it, an overwhelming majority of students will say 'yes' (note: this doesn't mean they are happy with their current situation).</p>

<p>Another thing to mention is that in all of these degree programs, professors are actively encouraging their brightest students to pursue doctoral degrees. It makes sense that they would want their best students to follow in their own footsteps, but it really sets false expectations for those students in the long run. I bet your son has received a lot of encouragement from his professors, but I don't think this encouragement is really to your son's benefit. No matter how bright or smart he is, the prospects of him finding a job when he graduates is slim-to-none. It is often described as a lottery. Would you devote 8 years of your life to something that is completely unattainable? Like I said, if the graduate education is a reward in itself, then maybe he should consider doing it.</p>

<p>But you will always need a reality check - that is, what will your son end up doing when he graduates? Many english Ph.D. students (median time to degree = 8 years) end up going to law school (another 3 years). The skills they learned in their Ph.D. are actually very well-suited for law school, so their Ph.D. training was not such a waste. <em>This is about the only career path that uses relevant skills from their Ph.D. program!!!</em> What skills will you learn in an art history Ph.D. program that are useful in the real world? I'm sure you can research this, but off the top of my head, I would say none.</p>

<p>This still leaves you with the question, what will your son be doing in 8 years? It almost certainly will not be teaching at the university level (or, in the off chance that he gets a teaching position somewhere, their is a high probability that it will be part-time with little job security - not something to be too happy about). Maybe teaching high school? After 8 years in graduate school, I could hardly consider this a satisfying career choice, but your son might be different. Business? In many areas, a Ph.D. means 'overqualified' or 'not really interested'. After 8 years, your son would have very few skills that are useful in the business world. Businesses do not just hire intelligent people (a Ph.D. won't get you anywhere) - they hire people who can get the job done (i.e. people with relevant experience, internships, etc.) As sad as this may be, I think you would be stuck working at the bottom rung of some company - and I can't really think of anything less satisfying than this.</p>

<p>In my opinion, the best thing to do is to find something practical that you love, and to pursue it. It would be much more fulfilling to spend 8 years building a satisfying career than to spend it in art grad school and then start out at the lowest place on the totem pole. But I think that whatever decision your son ends up making will be the correct decision. Only a few people are cut out for humanities Ph.D. programs (I'm obviously not one of them) but those few people self-select into these programs, so they are the ones who belong.</p>

<p>One final consideration - MANY humanities grad students end up with a bit of debt by the time they graduate. This is something to avoid - ESPECIALLY because you don't want your finances to force you into an even worse situation. I don't know of any Ph.D. programs that make you pay for your masters, so I would look into it more closely. $50,000 is a lot to pay for a masters when you are looking at another 5+ years of schooling. (I don't know what avg. time to degree for your program is, but in many other programs it's 7-8 years).</p>

<p>There's a lot of literature out there on the internet about humanities Ph.D. programs. There are probably websites more specific to this type of Ph.D. program, so you could try looking for those. But also, over the course of an undergraduate degree, your son will naturally find the best path to take (hopefully). I hope this was somewhat helpful (but if not, it's cool).</p>

<p>P.S. Sometimes it's possible to defer acceptance for 1 year - something that he might look into if he does get accepted into a top program.</p>

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This still leaves you with the question, what will your son be doing in 8 years? It almost certainly will not be teaching at the university level (or, in the off chance that he gets a teaching position somewhere, their is a high probability that it will be part-time with little job security - not something to be too happy about). Maybe teaching high school? After 8 years in graduate school, I could hardly consider this a satisfying career choice, but your son might be different. Business? In many areas, a Ph.D. means 'overqualified' or 'not really interested'. After 8 years, your son would have very few skills that are useful in the business world. Businesses do not just hire intelligent people (a Ph.D. won't get you anywhere) - they hire people who can get the job done (i.e. people with relevant experience, internships, etc.) As sad as this may be, I think you would be stuck working at the bottom rung of some company - and I can't really think of anything less satisfying than this.

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<p>One way to improve your job security is to get your PhD at a school that has a powerful general brand name, a strong recruiting scene, and a well-placed alumni network: such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, Berkeley, Columbia, etc. That way, if you don't get a job in your field after you complete the PhD (which I agree is quite likely in a discipline such as art history), you can still leverage the brand name of your school and the recruiting resources to obtain a highly lucrative job in consulting, investment banking, venture capital, private equity, or the like. For example, I know one woman who finished her PhD in English from Harvard and is now a strategy consultant at McKinsey, now making literally triple what her advisors are making. </p>

<p>But this sort of thing usually happens at only the small subset of schools that have powerful brand names. McKinsey didn't really care very much what that woman studied, they just cared about the general Harvard brand name. Other schools that don't have strong general brand names simply don't offer these kinds of opportunities, no matter how prominent their individual programs may be. A strong brand name therefore serves as a risk reduction mechanism. Firms such as McKinsey just don't recruit at schools that don't have prominent brands. </p>

<p>A well-branded school may also mean that you may not even necessarily have to graduate at all, but can garner an excellent job simply through networking, sometimes inadvertently. To use the example of Harvard again, I know one guy who got a job at a private equity firm simply because his roommate's brother worked there and was able to arrange an interview. Steve Ballmer is CEO of Microsoft basically because he was Bill Gates's college poker playing buddy. When it comes to getting jobs, the old adage still holds true: 'It's not what you know, it's who you know'.</p>

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<p>Haha everyone here is just trying to help... So let's keep it that way.</p>

<p>On this note, I want to hear everyone's vision on future job-market / pathway to professorship for me. I will be going to graduate school this year and my long term career goal is to be a professor (research and teaching oriented) in the field of biomedical engineering / computational biology. I realize that I might have to do a few years of post-doc in order to be a professor at a (mediocre) university. If that does not work out, then I will work in the industry for a few years and then apply for a professorship when there is an opportunity. Please tell me if I am too naive. I am also open to any advice in choosing a graduate school (still deciding where to go right now).</p>

<p>Thanks in advance</p>

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<p>"research and teaching oriented" - which is it? There are teaching schools (tenure based on teaching and modest research) and research schools (tenure based on mostly or all research), then there are hybrids. In general, the research schools are more "prestigious" than hybrid schools than teaching schools.</p>

<p>The job outlook is different for different fields. Some fields are saturated, like Econ. That would be a very difficult market to get into in the coming years. Some fields, like business are understaffed, so doctoral candidates are in a good position. Some fields, like engineering, are at a happy medium where the best candidates find positions (again, this depends on the type of engineering, though).</p>

<p>Biomed seems like a good field right now. Most Biomed departments I've seen appear to be growing, so I believe there's good potential there. In addition, there's a good amount of non-academic positions, so that keeps the academic market fairly balanced (when academia is the only viable option, the market floods). And from anecdotal evidence, it seems like there will be more Biomed grant money in the future as the Babyboomers age.</p>

<p>Whether or not you need a post-doc depends. If you have good research and have a some experience teaching, you can often skip post-doc and go directly to a tenure track position. What tends to happen, though, is that students have research still developing or have no experience teaching, in which case an extra year adds a lot of value to their CV. In such a case, they choose a post-doc. In other cases, a person can't find a tenure-track position, so they either sign on as a visiting faculty or as a post-doc somewhere.</p>

<p>Regarding my previous point, if a student has to have Mommy research his future, I have extreme doubts that he'll survive presenting at a major conference or in a job talk (or for that matter, dealing with undergraduates that are apparently more mature). That sort of person needs a year or two (or more) to develop before jumping into the academic ring. </p>

<p>You can try and sugar coat the situation all you want (or even call me a jerk), but that sort of mentality is why we have people like this (20+ year olds that require Mommy to pay the bills and plan the future).</p>

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<p>"regarding my previous point, if a student has to have Mommy research his future, I have extreme doubts that he'll survive presenting at a major conference or in a job talk (or for that matter, dealing with undergraduates that are apparently more mature). That sort of person needs a year or two (or more) to develop before jumping into the academic ring.</p>

<p>You can try and sugar coat the situation all you want (or even call me a jerk), but that sort of mentality is why we have people like this (20+ year olds that require Mommy to pay the bills and plan the future)."</p>

<p>GP - I have NO idea what your problem is and I am sorry that I offended you in some way. I am so sorry that I ever even posted on this forum. If I could erase it I would. My son did NOT ask me to research anything nor did he ask me to come here & ask questions. For some reason you really seem to have a chip on your shoulder.</p>

<p>Don't bother responding because I am not coming back here. </p>

<p>Thank you to all the other posters who offered some insight. I am sorry if I offended people here.</p>

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<p>The problem, G.P., is that sounds like a pop psychology, which doesn't always help. The last few people posting on this issue have been extremely helpful. Your last post here was filled with good advice and sounds fine until the last paragraph.</p>

<p>Tell me this: you get into an Ivy League in your field for grad school, without significant financial assistance, and you get into a middle-ground school with funding. Your parents offer to pay for the Ivy League schooling. Your career prospects are much better with the Ivy League education. Do you take your parents' money?</p>

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Tell me this: you get into an Ivy League in your field for grad school, without significant financial assistance, and you get into a middle-ground school with funding. Your parents offer to pay for the Ivy League schooling. Your career prospects are much better with the Ivy League education. Do you take your parents' money?

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<p>That's a personal decision. It's one thing to take some money for college, and it's another thing to have mom doing your career research, choosing your school, renting your apartment, paying your bills, etc. That sort of mentality breeds the students that graduate college and need to be told what to do next, a large number of which go to graduate school, because it's the avenue of least resistance. </p>

<p>Master's programs are full of people who have no shamefully low levels of problem solving abilities, because someone else has solved their problems all their life. They go to a college because their parents tell them to. They go to a master's program because continuing the current situation (college) is easier than change. They then go to a doctoral program because continuing the current situation is easier than change. Then they get to the doctoral program without any level of independent thought or problem solving because they've just done what they were told their whole life and they fail.</p>