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University that want to retain computer science professors, especially those working in hot fields such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, will ha

University that want to retain computer science professors, especially those working in hot fields such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, will have to pay them well. The main problem may be political -- can they pay professors in different departments very different amounts? One reason it is difficult to attact high school teachers who can teach computer programming well is that teachers' union contracts say that you have to pay gym teachers and CS teachers the same amount.

_delirium 8y ago
> can they pay professors in different departments very different amounts In the US this is already common. But salaries in AI (and to a lesser extent CS in general) have recently gotten high enough that you'd need much bigger differentials, plus you start getting to absolute salary numbers that become unaffordable to all but a handful of places. An early-career academic at a top university might make, say, $60-80k in the humanities versus $100-130k in CS, but companies will pay $150k+. A prominent tenured professor in CS can make $200k+ in some cases in recent years, but if you believe recent reports [1], senior AI researchers are being paid $1m+ outside of academia, which seems really unlikely to be matched. I'm not sure it's necessarily a problem per se, though. Depends on what your goals are. As a fairly junior CS academic, it's good for me personally. CS faculty jobs are now much easier to come by than is usually the case in academia (look at the nightmare stories of physicists and biologists doing 10-year postdocs trying to land a tenure-track position). And pay has risen enough that it's now pretty good, even if still not as good as industry. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/19/technology/artificial-intelligence-salaries-openai.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/19/technology/artificial-int...
- ghaff 8y ago
  Professors taking sabbaticals to work at private companies seems to be a common pattern as well—and probably a generally good one for everyone involved.
finolex1 8y ago
That shouldn't really be a problem, and is already true in a lot of cases. For instance, professors in business schools get paid significantly more than professors in the economics department of the same university.
- w0m 8y ago
  This, most economics programs aren't attached to business schools because of that. At a more granular level, Finance also gets a nice bump due to private sector pressures.
fergie 8y ago
"can they pay professors in different departments very different amounts?" I've worked at a couple of universities, and as far as I understood it there were special provisions for professors of law and medicine, meaning that they got paid more, and that they could work outside of the University to a greater degree than senior academics in other departments.
pulisse 8y ago
can they pay professors in different departments very different amounts? Absolutely. The baseline salary for a given rank varies across divisions (salaries in STEM fields start higher than in the social sciences, which in turn pay better than humanities) and varies across schools (law and medical schools pay better than arts and sciences, since the former compete directly with the private sector). More importantly, faculty compensation is negotiated on an individual basis, and deans have tremendous leeway in how much they can offer to retain talent in the face of competing offers. At a first- or second-tier research university it's typical for star faculty to have a salary that's 2x or 3x the department baseline (or more).

_delirium 8y ago

> can they pay professors in different departments very different amounts In the US this is already common. But salaries in AI (and to a lesser extent CS in general) have recently gotten high enough that you'd need much bigger differentials, plus you start getting to absolute salary numbers that become unaffordable to all but a handful of places. An early-career academic at a top university might make, say, $60-80k in the humanities versus $100-130k in CS, but companies will pay $150k+. A prominent tenured professor in CS can make $200k+ in some cases in recent years, but if you believe recent reports [1], senior AI researchers are being paid $1m+ outside of academia, which seems really unlikely to be matched. I'm not sure it's necessarily a problem per se, though. Depends on what your goals are. As a fairly junior CS academic, it's good for me personally. CS faculty jobs are now much easier to come by than is usually the case in academia (look at the nightmare stories of physicists and biologists doing 10-year postdocs trying to land a tenure-track position). And pay has risen enough that it's now pretty good, even if still not as good as industry. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/19/technology/artificial-intelligence-salaries-openai.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/19/technology/artificial-int...

ghaff 8y ago
Professors taking sabbaticals to work at private companies seems to be a common pattern as well—and probably a generally good one for everyone involved.

finolex1 8y ago

That shouldn't really be a problem, and is already true in a lot of cases. For instance, professors in business schools get paid significantly more than professors in the economics department of the same university.

w0m 8y ago
This, most economics programs aren't attached to business schools because of that. At a more granular level, Finance also gets a nice bump due to private sector pressures.

fergie 8y ago

"can they pay professors in different departments very different amounts?" I've worked at a couple of universities, and as far as I understood it there were special provisions for professors of law and medicine, meaning that they got paid more, and that they could work outside of the University to a greater degree than senior academics in other departments.

pulisse 8y ago

can they pay professors in different departments very different amounts? Absolutely. The baseline salary for a given rank varies across divisions (salaries in STEM fields start higher than in the social sciences, which in turn pay better than humanities) and varies across schools (law and medical schools pay better than arts and sciences, since the former compete directly with the private sector). More importantly, faculty compensation is negotiated on an individual basis, and deans have tremendous leeway in how much they can offer to retain talent in the face of competing offers. At a first- or second-tier research university it's typical for star faculty to have a salary that's 2x or 3x the department baseline (or more).