<p>Inmotion12, I’m not sure what you’re talking about. Exactly which engineering academic positions are paying $150k to start right after obtaining one’s PhD? Please name some. The vast majority of engineering PhD’s who embark upon academic careers must take post-docs which only pay around $40-50k a year. Even those lucky few who are actually able to bypass the post-doc to head directly into an tenure-track engineering assistant professorship will make nowhere near the sorts of salaries that you are implying. </p>
<p>You say that you have access to a Stanford career development center tool that displays PhD salaries of those entering academia. Interesting that I can’t easily find access to this tool. But putting that issue aside, I would argue that what is far more relevant are the salaries of actual Stanford engineering faculty. According to Stanford’s officially published salary announcement, in the 2008-2009 academic year, **Stanford engineering associate professors - which is one promotion grade above the assistant level - made only about $120k for an academic year. ** Assistant Professor salaries are determined by the year that one obtained your bachelor’s degree, and if you were an assistant professor who earned your bachelor’s in 2004, you would be paid $90k for an academic year. I assume that those who earned their bachelor’s in earlier years would be paid more, but certainly not more than what the associate professors would make. Even after adding in the optional 2/9 summer salary support, which is generally unguaranteed and dependent upon one’s success in obtaining grant funding, and even after accounting for the fact that the data is a few years old and current salaries are surely slightly higher - I struggle to see how one could arrive at a $150k salary figure for a brand new PhD. </p>
<p><a href=“You've requested a page that no longer exists | Stanford News”>You've requested a page that no longer exists | Stanford News;
<p>Furthermore, let’s remember that this is Stanford we’re talking about - Stanford being one of the world’s elite engineering schools. Let’s face it - most newly minted engineering PhD students from even the top programs, including from Stanford itself, could never dream of garnering even an asst professorship job talk at Stanford, much less an actual job offer. In fact, most would surely be glad to take a low-paying postdoc at Stanford. </p>
<p>To ensure that the Stanford payscale is not an anomaly, I also looked at the faculty payscale at the University of Michigan - another highly regarded engineering school. Plugging in some names of random Michigan engineering assistant professors that you can find through the departmental websites, I rarely find a single one who in 2010 was being paid more than $100k of a full-time equivalent (FTE) equivalent salary which includes pro-rated summer support. For example, Mona Jarrahi, current assistant professor in the EECS department at Michigan, and who earned her PhD at - yes - Stanford, was paid only $90k FTE in 2010. Nor did she obtain her Michigan position right after graduating from Stanford, for she first had to serve a presumably low-paying “research associate” position, which is basically a postdoc, at Berkeley. Mina Rais-Zadeh was paid only $89k FTE as an EECS asst professor in 2010, and that was after she served a low-paying postdoc at Georgia Tech. </p>
<p>[Prof</a>. Mona Jarrahi - Terahertz Electronics Laboratory - Prof. Mona Jarrahi](<a href=“http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~mjarrahi/mjarrahi.html]Prof”>http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~mjarrahi/mjarrahi.html)</p>
<p>[Resonant</a> MEMS Group - People](<a href=“http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~minar/member.html?id=1]Resonant”>http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~minar/member.html?id=1)</p>
<p>To ensure that EECS was not an anomaly at Michigan, I also looked up salaries of some engineering assistant professors in other departments. I see that Sunita Nagrath in chemical engineering made only $92k in 2010. Vikram Gavini of mechanical engineering made only $87k. Valeriy Ivanov of Civil Engineering made only $88k. </p>
<p>[Michigan</a> Chemical Engineering | Sunitha Nagrath](<a href=“http://che.engin.umich.edu/people/nagrath.html]Michigan”>http://che.engin.umich.edu/people/nagrath.html)</p>
<p><a href=“Faculty Profiles – Mechanical Engineering”>Vikram Gavini – Mechanical Engineering;
<p><a href=“Civil and Environmental Engineering – University of Michigan”>Civil and Environmental Engineering – University of Michigan;
<p>Here is the tool for those who want to convince themselves.</p>
<p>[Salary</a> Supplement | The Michigan Daily](<a href=“http://data.michigandaily.com/tmdsal]Salary”>http://data.michigandaily.com/tmdsal)</p>
<p>How about the engineering faculty salaries at UIUC, one of the most highly ranked schools in engineering, particularly in EECS? **Not a single assistant professor in EECS was paid more than $92k in the 2008-2009 year. **</p>
<p>[University</a> of Illinois employee payroll](<a href=“http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/education/html_17d9531c-6766-11df-85bd-0017a4a78c22.html]University”>http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/education/html_17d9531c-6766-11df-85bd-0017a4a78c22.html)</p>
<p>Finally, let’s consider Berkeley, one of the most prestigious engineering schools in the world. Granted, the UC system has been suffering from recent budget problems, but Berkeley should nevertheless still be expected to pay salaries that are competitive to what UMichigan or UIUC would pay. Yet Asst Professor Pieter Abbeel made only $123k in total pay (including summer support) in 2009. Asst Professor Koushik Sen made only $123k, Danielle Tullman Ercek made only $103k. I can’t find a single engineering assistant professor, even one with years of experience, who made more than $150k</p>
<p>[Pieter</a> Abbeel | EECS at UC Berkeley](<a href=“http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Faculty/Homepages/abbeel.html]Pieter”>Pieter Abbeel | EECS at UC Berkeley)</p>
<p>[Koushik</a> Sen | EECS at UC Berkeley](<a href=“http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Faculty/Homepages/ksen.html]Koushik”>Koushik Sen | EECS at UC Berkeley)</p>
<p>[UC</a> Berkeley, Dept of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering](<a href=“http://cheme.berkeley.edu/faculty/tullman-Ercek/]UC”>http://cheme.berkeley.edu/faculty/tullman-Ercek/)</p>
<p>[State</a> Worker Salary Search - sacbee.com](<a href=“http://www.sacbee.com/statepay/]State”>http://www.sacbee.com/statepay/)</p>
<p>So Inmotion12, I’m afraid that I don’t know what you’re talking about when you say that graduates of top engineering PhD programs who enter academia are commonly being paid $150k to start. Exactly who are these people, exactly which schools are they working at, and how were they able to all consistently skip the low-paying postdoc step? If what you are saying is really true, then apparently somebody forgot to tell all of the engineering assistant professors at UIUC, Michigan, Berkeley, and yes, even Stanford, because they’re clearly being low-balled and should be agitating for higher salaries. </p>
<p>By all means, name some actual people who are actually making $150k in new faculty positions right after graduation. I’ve named some people. I’m sure that Danielle Ercek, Mona Jarrahi, and Sunitha Nagrath would like to know more about all of these engineers in academia who are making $150k to start. </p>
<p>So let’s review. The vast majority of newly minted engineering PhD’s, even from top schools, will not have the option of a tenure-track asst prof job right after graduation, even at an average department. Rather, they are looking at 1-3 years of a low-paid postdoc, after which they might have the opportunity to place for an assistant professorship. Might. If they’re lucky, that assistant professorship will be at a top-ranked school such as Michigan or UIUC…where they will earn about $90k to start. {If they’re less lucky, they’ll place at a far lower ranked eng department that will probably pay them far less, and if they’re truly unlucky, they won’t garner any academic placements anywhere at all.} Or, if they come from a name-brand PhD program such as Stanford or MIT, they could immediately take a high-paying position in finance or consulting right after graduating. I think we can clearly understand why many of them will choose the latter.</p>