<p>I go to The London School of Economics.</p>
<p>Thinking about this some more, I've met far too many academics who don't enjoy teaching. From my perspective, this is a bad fit. As a society, you would <em>want</em> some of your very best teaching the next generation. Even if it means putting up with some undergrads who may turn out to be dunderheads.</p>
<p>Well, I'm a new college graduate, I love my job so much that I don't want to leave at night. I'm having the time of my life. There's no studying to do, and I get to party every weekend? I have no family to support right now and an annual income close to 90K when you include bonuses, all to spend on myself. How is that not better than grad school/college?</p>
<p>Noggarder,</p>
<p>If you love your job so much, why do you want to get five masters degrees?
Hahaha!</p>
<p>My company is paying for 2 years of grad school and giving me half salary while I'm away at school. After going through the program, I'll also get a promotion and I'll be put on the fast track up the corproate ladder. Don't get me wrong, I really like school, but work life is definitely more fun. For me at least. That's why I was weighing the pros and cons of getting another master's.</p>
<p>nogardder, what type of work do you do? And when when you get to leave at night?</p>
<p>I'm an engineer working in defense, particularly threat discrimination, advanced algorithms. It's very exciting and interesting cutting edge stuff. I get to work at 9am, and leave at 5-6 if I have plans to hang out with friends. If not, I go to the gym to work out, play basketball or tennis, eat dinner, and then go back to work and stay until 11PM or so, then go home to sleep. If I have no plans, I go home and sit in front of the computer anyways, so might as well make some more money working OT. There are people at work around the clock up to midnight, so there's always someone to keep me company.</p>
<p>nogardder who do you work for? lockheed martin?</p>
<p>
[quote]
Professor is one of the jobs I am the most turned off to in the world. I know I will get flak for saying this, but I have no clue why anyone would want to become a professor. The amount of work you have to put in for so-so pay and pretty poor work opportunities just make it that much more repulsive an option, in my eyes. I would rather teach primary school, community college, high school, coach little league, ANYTHING but be a university professor.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, I'll tell you the biggest perk of all. As a tenured professor, you can study ANY topic you want, no matter how obscure or how unmarketable it is. Intellectually speaking, it is probably the most free job in the world. At any other job, you are going to inevitably be assigned to projects that you just don't think are interesting at all. I certainly have been. Believe me, it is no fun to be forced to work like a dog, spending all your free time, to complete a project that you personally don't care about. That's when work becomes mental torture. </p>
<p>As a professor, you choose the projects that interest you. If all of a sudden, you find a project to be uninteresting, then you stop working on it. It's up to you. </p>
<p>The other aspect of being a professor is something I alluded to above - the tenure. Getting tenure makes you virtually unfireable. There are very few other jobs, at least in this country, that protect your job security the way that tenured professors are protected. If you take a regular corporate job, you can be laid off at anytime, for any reason, or no reason at all. You could be doing a great job, and still get laid off, because perhaps you were unlucky enough to be doing that great job in a corporate division that is to be eliminated. Or, more insidiously, your performance could be threatening to your manager who fears that you are doing so well that you will ultimately replace him, so the safe thing for him to do is get rid of you. </p>
<p>Consonant with that are the large blocks of time you have off as a professor. You get the whole summer off. You get winter break off (usually 1 whole month). You get spring break off. You get a year-long sabbatical every 6-9 years. There are large blocks of time off. I know a guy who is the son of 2 tenured professors at a no-name school. He (with his family) has travelled around the world because most summers, he and his parents would be off from school and so would have plenty of time to travel. And not just those harried 1-2 week vacations that most people get, but long, leisurely vacations that lasted several months and really allowed you to soak up the culture. Granted, there were a few summers where one of the parents had to stay to do something academic (i.e. advance their research), but in most summers, the family just did whatever they wanted. Other than K-12 teaching, I know of no other jobs that will consistently give you large blocks of time off like that. </p>
<p>Now, granted, a lot of tenured profs don't use this time off to enjoy life. Many of them continue to work long hours even during their off-time to advance their research. But that's * by choice *. They don't really HAVE to do that. For example, I know tenured professors at MIT who haven't published anything in years. Plenty of them really are doing nothing academic. </p>
<p>Which leads to the other major major fringe benefit of being a prof - the side consulting and side-businesses. Now, granted, this benefit is generally only available to profs in certain disciplines, i.e. engineering, CS, most of the natural sciences, economics, political science, policy, law, and (especially) business. Because you have so much free time once tenured, you can choose to use your time to make a LOT of money on the side. I know one materials science prof at MIT who basically spends all his time engaged in venture capital - he's a principal at a VC firm. I know others who have major consulting practices on the side. Amar Bose, professor of EECS at MIT, started Bose Corporation on the side, and he's worth over $1.5 billion because of it. Ron Rivest, another professor of EECS at MIT, is the 'R' in RSA Security (which is now part of EMC), and he's worth many millions of dollars because of that. I know of very few other careers in which you can reasonably run a successful side-business like that. </p>
<p>Now, obviously, much of the above is predicated on the notion that you will get tenure. And I do agree that the act of getting tenure is a pain. But I think a better way to look at it is if you're an untenured assistant prof, then it's something akin to having a regular corporate job. In 6-8 years, you might fail your tenure review and thus have to look for another job. But, frankly, if you had a regular corporate job, then within 6-8 years, you'd probably either have been laid off, or your company might have ordered you to move. Hence, either way, you'd have to move. But then there is also the chance that you might actually get tenure, in which case you now have a job for life. </p>
<p>Even if you don't get tenure, frankly, I don't see what's so bad about it, at least relative to what happens in the corporate world. If you're a former assistant prof in a science or engineering who doesn't get tenure, you are very likely to at least be able to get a senior research position at a tech company or a national lab, or maybe even be able to come in as a manager. For example, I have known a LOT of incompetent and unqualified technoogy managers in my day, who don't have degrees in the subject, who have no knowledge of the material, who don't even have any serious management or technology experience, and are just totally worthless. Somebody who has actually worked as an assistant prof should be at least as competent as those guys. There is also the opportunity to get into consulting or investment banking. </p>
<p>The point is, I don't see the plight of an assistant prof who doesn't get tenure to be any worse than somebody who has been working in the corporate world for awhile, and then loses his job. Either way, you are going to have to market yourself properly to get another job. It's painful either way.</p>
<p>Sakky,</p>
<p>Back in the 1970's, that was how university teaching worked. hence, being a professor was a pretty sweet job. Nowadays, you have people who get great educations and never get tenure. So saying that being a prof is great because you can get tenure and be unfireable is a solid argument if you want to deny that fact that getting tenure these days is very difficult in most places and almost impossible in others.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Right now is always the best time of my life because I just love my life more and more every second.
[/quote]
Thats a great attitude :)</p>
<p>I'm an undergrad now, and while I have the freedom to do whatever the ****ing hell I want [while my parents still pay for everything], I also have no social life or peer group. Hmm, not quite sure what to make of it...</p>
<p>
[quote]
Back in the 1970's, that was how university teaching worked. hence, being a professor was a pretty sweet job. Nowadays, you have people who get great educations and never get tenure. So saying that being a prof is great because you can get tenure and be unfireable is a solid argument if you want to deny that fact that getting tenure these days is very difficult in most places and almost impossible in others.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I don't deny that a lot of people don't get tenure. In fact, I EXPLICITLY acknowledged that fact in my second-to-last paragraph in my previous post. </p>
<p>Look the truth is, we live in a more competitive world nowadays compared to the 70's where it's hard to get job security of any kind. For example, back in the 70's, you really could just join the union, say making automobiles, right out of high school and have a job for life. Look at what's happening in Detroit now. Back in the old days, you could join one of the super-behemoths like IBM and with the security of a job for life. Then IBM laid off 1/3 of the company in the early 90's and that promise of lifetime IBM employment was gone forever. </p>
<p>I personally don't see what's so bad about being a prof, even if you don't get tenure. So let's say that you don't get tenure so now you have to get another job. Well, like I said, if you worked in the corporate world, it's likely you're not going to be able to keep your job for more than 6-8 years anyway. An consider this. As an untenured assistant prof, you at least have assurance that you will keep your job for the next 6-8 years until you are up for tenure review, as assistant profs are almost never fired before that time (unless they really really screw up). But companies can lay you off at ANY time. Heck, I've known people who got laid off literally just a few weeks after they got hired. You had people who had actually moved into the area along with their families, got rid of the domicile that they used to live in in their previous location, in order to start up a new job, and then in a few weeks, got laid off. Heck, some firms will effectively 'lay you off' before you even START the job. For example, during the wake of the dotcom bust, some people who were graduating who had signed job offers had their job offers rescinded by the companies. In some cases, the companies at least paid them severance. But in other cases, they didn't - they just rescinded the offer, effectively laying them off before they even got started, and gave them nothing. </p>
<p>So if anything, I would argue that being a prof, even an untenured assistant prof, still gives you more job security than most private-sector jobs do. Yeah, in 6 years, you might fail your tenure review and thus have to look for another job. But hey, if you take a private sector job, you might get laid off in 6 * days <a href="or%20sometimes%20less">/i</a>, and then have to be looking for another job. </p>
<p>Now, let's say that you don't even get an assistant prof tenure-track offer at all. Well, then this reverts back to the discussion we had in the other thread. With a new PhD, there are a lot of other things you can do. It becomes a matter of how to leverage your credential and your knowledge into other fields. But as we explored in that other thread, a lot of new PhD's don't really want to know how to leverage their credential and knowledge into other fields.</p>
<p>I am in full agreement with Sakky about the attractiveness of being a university professor. Among all he said I appreciate most is the freedom of pursue learning in practically any direction you wish specially after tenure. You could choose to do consulting, form Company, or spend a lot of time guide your kids. You are very much in control of your life. The pay keep increase as you get older, six figure salaries is no unusual and you could retire very late in life if you so wish.</p>
<p>I've met quite a few professors who started out in industry and later switched to gain more freedom. Freedom and job security (assistant professors still have more control of their own fate than many in industry) are probably values gained as one ages. Fresh graduates are more likely to take big risks instead.</p>
<p>The number of professorships has steadily increased over the years. Chances are that your school, whereever you are, is plunking down big bucks for new buildings that will expand research. Perhaps the rate is outstripped by the increase in students but it's not as bleak as some believe.</p>
<p>Links have been posted regarding professors who warn of a glut. They attack government statistics BUT they themselves have a vested interest in the supply/demand of academics.</p>
<p>All a propoganda game either way.</p>