4 ms·

Maybe universities should consider paying more to compete with the tech companies. It's a free market and whatnot. If the price goes up, you gotta pay more. Com

Maybe universities should consider paying more to compete with the tech companies. It's a free market and whatnot. If the price goes up, you gotta pay more. Complaining about the price going up isn't exactly productive.

bertr4nd 11y ago
I doubt universities can come close to affording it. My CV wouldn't have gotten me a tenure-track position at a top school, but my income in industry is much higher than even the best paid professors at my alma mater (ignoring profs' consulting income, of course). To be honest I wonder if the academics that are still there just don't realize how lucrative industry is...
- pbz 11y ago
  How much is the difference between academia and industry? Can you share some numbers or ranges?
  - arjunnarayan 11y ago
    Tenure-track professors in computer science at top universities get paid about 100,000 to 250,000. You can look this up publicly because a) California state employee salaries are online [1] b) UC Berkeley is a top school for CS professors and competitive with everyone else on salaries. Looking at random AI faculty members shows about 100k at hiring, about 150k at tenure, while machine learning king of kings Michael I Jordan gets 300k. Google pays starting undergrads > 160k, and fresh PhD students > 225k[2] (all in comp including first year vesting stock + base pay + expected 15% bonus). I imagine if they're poaching faculty, they're getting significantly more than that[3]. Basically I'd say the industry salaries are at least 2x the academic salaries, if not higher. The flagship hires are paid a lot more (think Yann LeCun, or Andrew Ng), and importantly, given the freedom to hire and build mini-empires to do stuff. As a final note, I know talking about salaries publicly is awkward, but this is all public information, and grad students talk freely about this sort of stuff with each other, so I don't feel like I'm revealing anything super secret beyond showing you how to look up the relevant information in publicly available areas. [1]: (http://www.sacbee.com/site-services/databases/state-pay/article2642161.html http://www.sacbee.com/site-services/databases/state-pay/arti...) [2]: Source: Glassdoor Google for "research scientist", which is the position that PhDs in AI/ML are hired into. [3]: Google levels are public, and while Glassdoor data is sparse, faculty who are poached are hired at at least the "senior staff engineer" level, which glassdoor says about 500k, which sounds around right to me, if not a little low. As an aside, salaries at the higher levels have much higher variance than at the lower levels, and to entice someone away from a tenured position probably requires hitting the higher ends of the salary band.
    - math_and_stuff 11y ago
      You're setting the bar for hiring faculty members far too high. Perhaps you mean tenured CS faculty? (Source: Stanford faculty in the process of moving to Google Research)
      - Ant5do 11y ago
        What would you expect appropriate bands to be, then? For tenured/non-tenured faculty?
        math_and_stuff 11y ago
        Given that most academics have, almost by definition, previously prioritized their work environment over their salary, one shouldn't even assume that an academic receives an (immediate) multiple factor raise by making the transition.
      - pgbovine 11y ago
        Brand-new CS assistant professor hires at any research-intensive CS department (there are ~80 of these schools in the U.S.) probably come in around $100k right now (as arjun said, many salaries are public) ... now that's a 9-month salary, so if you get grants to fund your summers (which you will if you're in the groove), that's a starting of $133k annual. That's not bad, considering most of these schools are located in low-ish cost of living areas. Of course, there are no stock options, huge bonuses, and other lavish benefits of industry, but it's definitely still a financially privileged position.
        math_and_stuff 11y ago
        I meant that the parent's analysis in his footnote of what the minimum position and starting salary would be for a faculty member to ever move is setting the bar too high; it seems my wording was vague. His academic numbers seem spot on, but I question footnote [3].
    - Xcelerate 11y ago
- cableshaft 11y ago
  Then universities should charge even higher tuitions or shift some of the ridiculous money for tuitions they're already getting and burning into building over-the-top facilities around to offer these people more money, or just don't have a computer science program. Over the past ten years I've seen my alma mater replace almost a third of its campus with brand new buildings 2 to 3 times the size of the old ones, and it has plans to replace almost half its campus by 2025 (its plan is a public document). The buildings it replaced were starting to show their age a bit, but they were still plenty usable (one building legitimately had health code violations. Ironically, it's one of the buildings that still hasn't been demolished yet). Meanwhile tuition there has more than doubled in less than ten years. Some of that is due to the government reducing its subsidy, but a good chunk of it is going into these massive construction projects. Some of that money can go to better salaries for professors getting lured by higher salaries elsewhere, surely (although I do worry more of it will go to administration salaries instead). Whining about losing employees because you aren't willing to pay enough (or offer enough ancillary benefits to augment your pay), especially when your tuitions are astronomical anyway, just comes across as arrogant, and they deserve to lose their best people.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
tdeck 11y ago
They are trying to close the gap, but it's a huge gap. I was told by a professor at my Alma Mater that PhD students get a 40k stipend (in St. Louis). Contrast that to most other programs where it might be closer to 20k, and to the industry where an intern can easily make 80k per year, and a graduating senior qualified for grad school can pull 6 figures from many places.
Eridrus 11y ago
Why? Industry actually has real work for these people to do that provides enough value that they can pay them huge salaries.

bertr4nd 11y ago

I doubt universities can come close to affording it. My CV wouldn't have gotten me a tenure-track position at a top school, but my income in industry is much higher than even the best paid professors at my alma mater (ignoring profs' consulting income, of course). To be honest I wonder if the academics that are still there just don't realize how lucrative industry is...

pbz 11y ago
How much is the difference between academia and industry? Can you share some numbers or ranges?
- arjunnarayan 11y ago
  Tenure-track professors in computer science at top universities get paid about 100,000 to 250,000. You can look this up publicly because a) California state employee salaries are online [1] b) UC Berkeley is a top school for CS professors and competitive with everyone else on salaries. Looking at random AI faculty members shows about 100k at hiring, about 150k at tenure, while machine learning king of kings Michael I Jordan gets 300k. Google pays starting undergrads > 160k, and fresh PhD students > 225k[2] (all in comp including first year vesting stock + base pay + expected 15% bonus). I imagine if they're poaching faculty, they're getting significantly more than that[3]. Basically I'd say the industry salaries are at least 2x the academic salaries, if not higher. The flagship hires are paid a lot more (think Yann LeCun, or Andrew Ng), and importantly, given the freedom to hire and build mini-empires to do stuff. As a final note, I know talking about salaries publicly is awkward, but this is all public information, and grad students talk freely about this sort of stuff with each other, so I don't feel like I'm revealing anything super secret beyond showing you how to look up the relevant information in publicly available areas. [1]: (http://www.sacbee.com/site-services/databases/state-pay/article2642161.html http://www.sacbee.com/site-services/databases/state-pay/arti...) [2]: Source: Glassdoor Google for "research scientist", which is the position that PhDs in AI/ML are hired into. [3]: Google levels are public, and while Glassdoor data is sparse, faculty who are poached are hired at at least the "senior staff engineer" level, which glassdoor says about 500k, which sounds around right to me, if not a little low. As an aside, salaries at the higher levels have much higher variance than at the lower levels, and to entice someone away from a tenured position probably requires hitting the higher ends of the salary band.
  - math_and_stuff 11y ago
    You're setting the bar for hiring faculty members far too high. Perhaps you mean tenured CS faculty? (Source: Stanford faculty in the process of moving to Google Research)
    - Ant5do 11y ago
      What would you expect appropriate bands to be, then? For tenured/non-tenured faculty?
      - math_and_stuff 11y ago
        Given that most academics have, almost by definition, previously prioritized their work environment over their salary, one shouldn't even assume that an academic receives an (immediate) multiple factor raise by making the transition.
    - pgbovine 11y ago
      Brand-new CS assistant professor hires at any research-intensive CS department (there are ~80 of these schools in the U.S.) probably come in around $100k right now (as arjun said, many salaries are public) ... now that's a 9-month salary, so if you get grants to fund your summers (which you will if you're in the groove), that's a starting of $133k annual. That's not bad, considering most of these schools are located in low-ish cost of living areas. Of course, there are no stock options, huge bonuses, and other lavish benefits of industry, but it's definitely still a financially privileged position.
      - math_and_stuff 11y ago
        I meant that the parent's analysis in his footnote of what the minimum position and starting salary would be for a faculty member to ever move is setting the bar too high; it seems my wording was vague. His academic numbers seem spot on, but I question footnote [3].
  - Xcelerate 11y ago
cableshaft 11y ago
Then universities should charge even higher tuitions or shift some of the ridiculous money for tuitions they're already getting and burning into building over-the-top facilities around to offer these people more money, or just don't have a computer science program. Over the past ten years I've seen my alma mater replace almost a third of its campus with brand new buildings 2 to 3 times the size of the old ones, and it has plans to replace almost half its campus by 2025 (its plan is a public document). The buildings it replaced were starting to show their age a bit, but they were still plenty usable (one building legitimately had health code violations. Ironically, it's one of the buildings that still hasn't been demolished yet). Meanwhile tuition there has more than doubled in less than ten years. Some of that is due to the government reducing its subsidy, but a good chunk of it is going into these massive construction projects. Some of that money can go to better salaries for professors getting lured by higher salaries elsewhere, surely (although I do worry more of it will go to administration salaries instead). Whining about losing employees because you aren't willing to pay enough (or offer enough ancillary benefits to augment your pay), especially when your tuitions are astronomical anyway, just comes across as arrogant, and they deserve to lose their best people.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

tdeck 11y ago

They are trying to close the gap, but it's a huge gap. I was told by a professor at my Alma Mater that PhD students get a 40k stipend (in St. Louis). Contrast that to most other programs where it might be closer to 20k, and to the industry where an intern can easily make 80k per year, and a graduating senior qualified for grad school can pull 6 figures from many places.

Eridrus 11y ago

Why? Industry actually has real work for these people to do that provides enough value that they can pay them huge salaries.