<p>Hi (i didn't know where else to post this thread, so I put it here),</p>
<p>Does anyone know how hard it is to become a professor at a public or private university? From what I hear, they get paid around 100k (correct me if I'm wrong) at publics, but doesnt this vary as well with prestige (ie a University of Oregon prof will earn less than a UC-Berkeley prof)? If so, how hard is it to get a job, maybe not at Berkeley, but at a mid-level public such as UWashington, UW-Madison, UFlorida, etc.?</p>
<p>(Sorry - just had to get it out of my system. ;) )</p>
<p>Assuming you aren't in one of the very, very few areas that have a shortage, it is very difficult to get a professorship. And no, profs (esp. starting out) don't make 100K - not even close. Heck, my undergrad advisor, who is the dept. chair, barely makes 50K - and he's tenured and has been there awhile. And no, you won't get paid more if you went to a more prestigious university. It may help you get hired, but the only things that will affect your pay upon hire are important publications (really, really important publications) and the level you are hired at (associate, assistant, adjunct). Some that have been there a long, long time and do great research may make 100K, but it isn't exactly common.</p>
<p>Most people get hired on as adjuncts and do that awhile, and believe me, you won't make much that way. You have to be a professor because you love the research.</p>
<p>it really depends on schools. several prof's in my school made over 100K, and a few of them are multimillionaires, (including one of the founder of genetech) but it is really hard to get hired here tho, unless you are a big shot...</p>
<p>OK, but the multi didn't get his money from being a prof. I'm also guessing that the 100K came from a combination of salary, speaking gigs, pubs, extra duties, etc. Straight salary - not usually. And pretty uncommon.</p>
<p>Like you said - must be a big shot (which was also one of my caveats). And by definition, there can't be many big shots...</p>
<p>ok fine, if you are simply talking about salaries... but note that no professor lives simply on salaries unless you are in a teaching school. usually professors at big name schools get hundreds of thousands dollar of grant money, and their compensation also adjusts with amount of grant money they get (kind of like grad students). and these multi have their own biotech companies, but that is also derived from their research. it is not like you have to be poor to do research. when opportunity presents itself, you can get rich pretty soon. btw 100k per year is very common in berkeley, how else can they afford to live there?</p>
<p>OK, first of all, most profs don't end up at big-name schools. What you're talking about is a very, very small percentage of all the people who get PhDs. It's even a small percentage of profs.</p>
<p>Secondly, many, many profs live off their salaries. Tiny salaries, because they are adjunct, or they are trying to publish like mad to get tenure (publishing, in general, does not exactly roll in the dough).</p>
<p>If you really want the real-life lowdown on the state of PhDs, check the Chronicle of Higher Education fora. Or any article in any published source.</p>
<p>well, im sorry. i guess my sampling was a little biased. but i assume that the schools he mentioned UW, UW-madison, UF, all very good schools, should have something comparable to Berkeley since they all the flagship public schools of their own states. but if you are talking about these football schools, you are right, i have no clue.</p>
<p>Just because a school isn't Berkeley doesn't mean it's a "football school." Take a deep breath. Berkeley is a renowned research institution. Most, if not all, other universities struggle to get to that level (and most don't make it). It's not because they are unworthy, necessarily, and there are some very good researchers at most large schools. But most do not make Berkeley money. And don't forget the many LACs out there as well.</p>
<p>Yes, your sampling was biased. Speaking as someone that is planning to be a prof, I am assuming I will have to adjunct a lot. I am assuming I will not make enough to pay the bills (thank goodness for my husband's salary!). I am assuming that there is a strong possibility I may never get tenure. That's after looking long and hard at the industry and speaking to a LOT of profs and unemployed PhDs (at all kinds of schools - research, teaching, prestigious and less-so, regions of country, etc.). I figured before I jumped into another decade of school that will claim my every living breathing moment, I should know what I was getting into. I'm just sharing the wisdom I gained from that research. Please don't be petulant or condescending.</p>
<p>What I've gathered from talking to profs: You can make pretty good money, but it is nothing compared to what you can do in industry. Some of the people I've talked to have estimated you can make twice as mush by going into industry. So, for most people, its about the perks and the job itself.</p>
<p>By the way, these profs are also at a big research school in the physical sciences. This can change a lot depending on the institution and the field. Not all profs even have the potential to make a ton of money.</p>
<p>I think it also depends on the department you are in. Eastcoastbound, I graduated from berkeley. I remember that my psych professor said when he just got hired by Berkeley and was told how much the salary was, he said the salary was ridiculously low to the point that he told the hiring committee that he'd rather teach high school...</p>
<p>desp, I'm sorry that i sound condescending to you. it was late and i said something stupid. one hting i have to agree with you being in industry makes helluva lot more money than being in academia. there is a saturation of talent out there in biological fields so that it is increasingly difficult to obtain a professorship at a good school. this issue is close to my heart since i don't have much appetite for industry either. i too talked to a lot of postdoc, graduate students, and professors. but saying prof's only make 50k is simply ridiculous. i think the better approach to this is instead of worrying about how much you get paid, get down to find an area nobody has really looked at before and do a good reseach. that will get you everywhere. like my advisor said "just do science, everything else will follow"</p>
<p>pydbl, the professors i refer to are mostly from mcb. i dont know much about psych department :) </p>
<p>overall, i think professors live pretty good lives with salary, funding money etc. but if you are interested in making money, it is probably not a good place to start (although i can give countless counter examples, since a lot of big biotech companies born straight out of academic labs) but if you enjoy research, academic freedom, and good old rivalries with other professors, it is definitely a good job.</p>
<p>my GA (who was in the same field as me) told me that you divide your time between research and teaching, and the university-paid salary will be pretty much correlated with how much time you spend on teaching (and maybe other political duties such as being a department chair or a school chair etc). The professors from biological sciences have to pay themselves for the time they spend on research from their grants (that's how they can adjust it i guess). </p>
<p>from what i knew, the starting salary at Penn is like 50k and 150k for tenured professor. i dont know if that's accurate though. however, the benefits were pretty good regardless of how much they get paid. even lab techs who get 20k a year get free tuition benefits (that is, they can take classes for free), terrific insurances and probably retirement benefits too.</p>
<p>I'm currently working on a M.S. and am hoping to be able to go on for a PhD afterwards. I'm not sure if I'll get into doctoral programs, and I realize that even if I do get the PhD, I might not get an academic positon right away. But I'm also willing to teach at the community college level or to work in some kind of non-profit organization or religious setting, even if it were not to pay that much.</p>
<p>So far in life, I've worked at low-paying jobs. My undergrad degree wasn't in a "marketable" major, and I didn't go to grad school right afterwards. For me, even 30K per year would be a major improvement, and 50K would seem like more than enough. (It's possible that my perspective might change over the years, of course...)</p>
<p>Well, of COURSE you will...no one doubts you, Ari :)</p>
<p>I guess threads like this just worry me, because people think, "Hey, those profs make big money. I want to do that!" It's just not realistic. There are WAAAAAAAAAAAY too many PhDs graduating every year to fill not only prof positions, but also industry positions. The number of unemployed PhDs goes up every year. Articles in every major newspaper, Chronicles, and other sources have talked about this.</p>
<p>The VAST, VAST majority of PhDs will never, ever, ever be tenured profs. Sorry, but it's the truth. Having a PhD from a prestigious top 10 or 15 place helps tremendously, but of course, the competition to get into those programs is almost as much as the competition for the jobs themselves. Plus, if a person doesn't get funding, that's an incredibly expensive degree, and with the job market what it is, I wouldn't want to face hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt without being extremely sure of what I was doing. For a person to get a PhD because they think they can land a cush, well-paying prof position is just phenomenally irresponsible.</p>
<p>I read somewhere about a PhD who committed suicide over his debt and lack of job prospects. Forewarned is forearmed. (Not that I'm suggesting anyone on the forum is going to go off himself, just illuminating the stress level a bit.)</p>
<p>I agree 100%. One of the reasons that I've actually decided to stay out of the PhD game until further notice is that I'm not willing to gamble with 5+ years of my life like that.</p>
<p>Call me uninspired, but I don't like the odds. I'm like Han Solo, I suppose.</p>
<p>I will do a PhD - if it's in a top 20 for my major and it's funded. Period. Otherwise, I'll independently publish and do other things that will eventually (I hope) get me into one of those top funded programs. If not, I'll have to make other plans, which is preferable to adding a 100K debt to my husband's 250K debt from undergrad and med school.</p>