<p>What are the job prospects?</p>
<p>This is what my D hopes to become.. an English Professor..we really haven't done a lot of research on job prospects yet though. Why do you ask?</p>
<p>Sounds like a great life to me. I'm guessing it is very hard to become one.</p>
<p>Isandin, congratulations. Rice is a great school.</p>
<p>My D is a grad student at UPenn and is working toward a doctorate to teach in the humanities . . .I think it all depends on what happens in the years of graduate school, the recs gained from profs, the stuff published, the fit of prospective professor and schools. It will be more complicated for my D, who is this summer marrying a musician and will have to coordinate with him who works where. She does have a back-up plan which has to do with her area of specialization, but hopes to teach in a college setting. That is a long time from now, though, and things change.</p>
<p>Everything I've read says that professors have it rough. Tenure track is very, very competitive. Has greater pay than the average teacher (that is, public high school, middle school, elementary school), but also has a huge push for constant research. </p>
<p>You will more than likely be working for 5-7 years without any job security; you'll be lucky to reach tenure track, and you'll probably have to switch universities a few times.</p>
<p>... The whole thing I read (it was a book, can't recall the title off-hand) seemed to be two aspiring professors (or current professors) suggesting that people consider hard whether they'd be happy with the "worst case" of professorship.</p>
<p>(Do a search for books on entering academia, there is a wealth of info for prospectives.)</p>
<p>
[quote]
You will more than likely be working for 5-7 years without any job security;
[/quote]
This is not our father's employment market. As far as I can tell, no one has job security today unless working for himself. So, although entry into college/university teaching may be tough, it appears to me the only field with job security, after 7 years. Not why one should choose it, tho, imo; that should be for love of the field, teaching and/or research.</p>
<p>oh, and never having to live in the real world ;).</p>
<p>jmmom, sounds appealing to me.</p>
<p>I was quoting from my limited memory of the book. That's a good point though, jmmom: getting to tenure may be tough (I would believe 5-7 years without security, if not more), but once you get it, you are GUARANTEED, barring some pretty extreme circumstances, to have a job until you retire. </p>
<p>At the same time, public universities (some of the "lessers,") are making a move toward hiring adjunct and assistant professors (non tenure track) -- in essence, temps -- and so it may get a lot more unstable soon.</p>
<p>
Time to resurrect the Confidentialia College thread? :D</p>
<p>jmmom, Oh no. I don't get your joke. I am afraid to ask what you mean?</p>
<p>The level of competition greatly depends on the field, and somewhat on the individual. </p>
<p>For example, if you are a female hispanic physicist, you will likely have an easier time of it than a white male who wants to teach English. </p>
<p>It can be much longer than 5-7 years of insecurity. These days, many professors work for a VERY long time before tenure even becomes a possibility. You won't necessarily have a choice in where you end up living, as you will have to take whatever job you can get. And, as with most fields, a lot depends on WHO you know rather than WHAT you know.</p>
<p>A couple years back, my college wanted to hire a non-tenure track theatre professor for a 3 year, non-renewable position. They got over a hundred applications for the position, if memory serves.</p>
<p>Academia is not for the faint of heart.</p>
<p>my one roommate is contemplating becoming a math professor. she hasn't even gotten her bachlors yet, so itll be awhile..</p>
<p>dstark - is it possiblel you are not yet a member of our faculty? See <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=40031&highlight=Doodling%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=40031&highlight=Doodling</a> post #302 for a partial summary and browse around the thread, if you dare, to see whence it all came.</p>
<p>For example, if you are a female hispanic physicist, you will likely have an easier time of it than a white male who wants to teach English. >>></p>
<p>Hmm.. That's not what Nancy Hopkins found when she investigated why she and other female scientists at MIT were having a harder time getting bigger labs, access to funding and salaries equivalent to that of their male colleagues. She and her female colleagues documented this situation. After her lab was duly expanded, she made discoveries that have been deemed crucial to winning the war against cancer. THAT was the background to the Summers flap.</p>
<p>Marite, I'm not saying that females and minorities are not treated unfairly sometimes by their colleagues or the administration. I'm saying that many departments are CONSCIOUSLY trying to HIRE women and minorities. What happens after they get hired is, as you pointed out, a different story.</p>
<p>jmmom, I see. Another opportunity missed. :)</p>
<p>But the findings also suggest that women are failing to get tenure because of systemic problems. A few weeks ago, the NYT carried an op-ed piece by two researchers who demonstrated that a higher proportion of math Ph.D.s had been going to women over the last couple of decades, this did not translate into a commensurate increase of tenured female math profs. The fastest growing segment of academia is made up of adjuncts. And it is an overwhelmingly female segment.</p>
<p>My son's too little to have serious job aspirations yet, but if he wanted to be a professor I'd have mixed feelings. Extreme pride he wanted to be in "the family business," working in an "industry" I think is noble and worthwhile. But I don't think it's a great life for everyone, and I'd worry about the sacrifices he'd be making while he was younger faculty member, and the never-ending pressure of always having something else that you must be doing. It's not a 9-5 job.</p>
<p>I recently completed my PhD and loved the teaching I did as a grad student, and I had the makings of a serious academic. But I chose not to become a faculty member. There were a number of reasons, but it boiled down to the fact that there were no faculty members whose life I envied once I saw faculty life up closer. No one seemed to have a life that was balanced with hobbies, family, and free time. I just didn't think I had the temperament for it. I didn't love the field so much I could dedicate so much of my life and time to it. Grad school was hard enough.</p>
<p>Of course it would be more appealing (for me) being a faculty member at different kind of place with less of a research focus (more like the respectable but not top-tier LAC I went to for undergrad, or the state college where my dad was a faculty member), but my field is extremely narrow and not taught at the undergrad level, so I didn't have the option of finding a different environment.</p>
<p>I guess my feelings about it would depend on his field, and what he was aiming for. Unless he was a real gunner, I'd feel better about his life with him teaching at Samford than at Stanford; at Columbia College rather than Columbia University.</p>
<p>Hoedown, you have just totally blown the illusion I had of the wonderful, pipe smoking life of the average tweedy professor. I really just thought you chose the type of school you wanted to work at and lived happily ever after! I really am starting to wonder if there are any nicely balanced careers that pay a living wage.</p>
<p>What do you all think of professionals teaching at business schools during early retirement?</p>