8 ms·
How much are professors paid?
- chrisseaton 7y agoSomething important to note when reading this is that at a university in the US, almost everyone is a professor. That's why these pay ranges are so wide - they include both very junior part-time staff and very senior world-class full-time staff.
- stingraycharles 7y agoCould you elaborate a bit? I know that over here there are certain requirements (needs to teach classes, publish at least one paper a year). Is this different in the US?
- chrisseaton 7y agoIn many countries a professor is usually extremely distinguished in their field, with perhaps twenty years' research experience, and you will only get a couple of them in each department, with some universities not having any. I think in the US everyone just automatically gets the title 'professor.'
- Cyph0n 7y agoThe same ranks exist in the US: 1. Assistant Professor 2. Associate Professor 3. [Full] Professor As far as I know, you should only use the title "Prof." to refer to a "full" professor, and "Dr." for assistant and associate professors. In reality, everyone is just referred to as a "professor".
- mock_twain 7y agoExactly. Except I thought you should use "Prof" for anybody with Professor in their title. My University also has a few other titles: Acting Prof, Research Prof, and of course Prof Emeritus
- maththrowawtays 7y agoI believe in (some) American universities, any non-grad student who teaches a class is called a professor.
- jedberg 7y agoIn the summer I had a grad student who was teaching the class as the primary teacher, and he was called "professor" (although I suspect his paycheck was just the standard grad check).
- barbecue_sauce 7y agoBasically, if you teach even a single class (you have alternative employment, teach at a few different schools, are underemployed, etc.) you are an adjunct professor. And there are a lot of adjuncts.
- phw 7y agoYou generally start as an assistant professor, which means you are on the tenure track but you don't yet have tenure. After several years, if you did well, you get promoted to associate professor, meaning that you got tenure. Finally, after some more years, you turn into a full professor, at which point you will likely earn the most. All three types are generally referred to as "professor" but they differ in their seniority.
- impendia 7y agoPromotion from associate professor to professor is not automatic; indeed, there are several associate professors in my department who have been at that rank for some time, and seem unlikely to get promoted. But it is reasonably common, unlike in (say) the UK.
- SolaceQuantum 7y agoThere are multiple 'professor' titles, but only one tenured faculty role. The tenured faculty is the holy grail, and everyone else is underpaid and overworked. [0] You have instructor, assistant professor, associate professor, and professor. There's also such things as visiting professor (temporary postition) or professor emeritus (used to be a professor). [0]. https://www.bu.edu/handbook/appointments-and-promotions/classification-of-ranks-and-titles/ https://www.bu.edu/handbook/appointments-and-promotions/clas...
- eesmith 7y agoCould you clarify what 'one tenured faculty role' means? The link you gave says "The granting of Tenure, discussed in “Tenure and Promotion on the Charles River Campus”, is a separate guarantee that is not implied by any of the titles discussed in this section." The tenure document, for example, says that 'The award of tenure to an Assistant Professor shall include promotion to the rank of Associate Professor.' So 'tenured associate professor' is a tenured faculty role, in addition to the 'tenured professor' faculty, such as http://www.bu.edu/wheelock/dr-leslie-dietiker-promoted-to-associate-professor-with-tenure/ http://www.bu.edu/wheelock/dr-leslie-dietiker-promoted-to-as... .
- kd0amg 7y agoI think GP is using "role" to mean the collection of tasks/functions performed by a person rather than their job title. As far as I can tell, duties and incentives don't change as much when going from associate to full professor as when going from assistant to associate.
- eesmith 7y agoThanks. I think I'm getting stuck on "The tenured faculty" rather than simply "tenure".
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- hyperpape 7y agoAlmost everyone except the adjuncts, which might be a small number at some R1 institutions, but might be a lot more common elsewhere.
- jedberg 7y agoTheir title is literally "adjunct professor". They would show up in this graph as "professor".
- hyperpape 7y agoMaybe. In some places, it's "lecturer" or "instructor". In addition, I looked up one individual I know is an adjunct, and his title was just "adjunct" on the department page. I suppose it's possible there's a more official database wherein his title is adjunct professor. Perhaps there's a difference in terminology? My sense is that in academic circles, adjunct is now frequently used not for a specific position/title, but for the class of professionals who are hired on a semester by semester basis and paid by the class. Whereas the assistant/associate/full professor ladder is well defined most places, the adjunct position is more of an afterthought. It's temporary/disposable labor.
- ska 7y agoAdjunct is a way of designating an affiliation that is not on the tenure track, i.e. is not regular faculty (and will not be). In my experience it's a professional affiliation that is flexible, designating that you are not a student, but not regular faculty. In some cases it designates a sessional lecturer (i.e. paid by the course, not full time, no job security), but it can also be used to associate someone in the department for the purposes of contributing to research or co-supervising a student. So you can end up being an adjunct for a department for a while without ever having been employed by them directly. Originally it was much more the latter use, and not the former, but as the use of non-TT instructors grew some places used adjunct for this, others "lecturer", "sessional" etc.
- mock_twain 7y agoNot entirely true - a growing number of PhD-holding faculty have labels like "lecturer" or "instructor", which are non-tenure-track and often contract based. Like in the public college system, this is leading to the majority of student contact hours being from faculty who don't have any permanent status within the university, and whose pay is far below even the junior professors.
- jxramos 7y agoThese contact hours are further diluted with TA's shouldering a lot of the burden too.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- sct202 7y agoMy sister was a doctor at a hospital affiliated with a local public state university (similar to the ones in the dataset) and was listed as a professor on publicly available salary databases because she would train interns and residents for them. She definitely wasn't a professor in the traditional research sense but she was teaching in a way.
- mcguire 7y agoIn the US, professors come in different grades: full professors, assistant professors, associate professors, etc. (https://maniagnosis.crsr.net/2016/02/a-short-guide-to-academic-titles.html https://maniagnosis.crsr.net/2016/02/a-short-guide-to-academ...)
- rconti 7y agoThat couldn't be less true. I'm not even sure what point you're trying to make. Obviously not "everyone" is a professor when you mix in facilities and administrative staff. If you're trying to more narrowly say "all instructors are considered professors", that's not true at any institution type, not even R1 (major research Universities) https://www.aaup.org/sites/default/files/10112018%20Data%20Snapshot%20Tenure.pdf https://www.aaup.org/sites/default/files/10112018%20Data%20S...
- chrisseaton 7y agoMy understanding that almost all academics with tenure and even many without in the US calls themselves a ‘professor.’ I'm not sure what you're trying to say with that PDF - it doesn't even mention the word!
- kgwgk 7y agoHow often do “very junior part-time staff” have tenure?
- chrisseaton 7y agoThey normally wouldn't.
- rconti 7y agoTheir title would be something like lecturer. I suppose students might call them professor, or they might insist on being called professor just like some Ph.D graduates might insist on being called 'Doctor' even though they're not a medical doctor. An associate professor would at least be tenure-track.
- chrisseaton 7y ago> Their title would be something like lecturer. Have you never heard of 'adjunct professors' in the US? > An associate professor In most countries people at the level of just associate professor don't call themselves 'professor.' > like some Ph.D graduates might insist on being called 'Doctor' even though they're not a medical doctor The title 'doctor' means you have a doctorate, or in some cases like the UK it's also used as a courtesy title for a medical professional with just a bachelors degree. PhDs, EngDs, DPhils, DLs, MDs, and more are all entitled to use it as much as each other.
- threwawasy1228 7y agoNot a very useful analysis, there are various levels of pay-grade and they all except the lowest ranks, often have 'professor' in their job titles. eg. Associate Professor, Assistant Professor, Professor, Professor Emeritus, Visiting Professor, and sometimes Contract Professor.
- mock_twain 7y agoFair and balanced. I spend all day doing useful analysis for science. On the internet, all I can hope for is doing mildly interesting work :D
- SubiculumCode 7y agoIt is wide ranging for sure. I think most starting assistant professors start in the 50 to 75k range. In Cal State, your salary will start on the lower end, and go up incrementally. If in the University of California system, it will start in the upper end, and within 6-10 years, your salary will have doubled.
- cybersnowflake 7y agoYup, 'professor' covers everything from adjuncts who are one step from freshly graduated grad students with the pay to match and eminent figures with entire departments under them and decades of connections.
- avani 7y agoThere is also a large difference between disciplines. Professors in professional schools such as law, medicine, or business tend to make significantly more than professors in the liberal arts (note: this includes math, engineering, and CS many places).
- Ancalagon 7y agoGood data, just wish it was presented a little differently. I can't tell where zero percent is for any of the salary graphs, and I'd also like to know the median home value used for calculating the values in the second graph. Otherwise, very informative post, thanks!
- aassddffasdf 7y agoHaha, right. I searched for "axis" to see if anyone was making this point before I re-made it.
- aassddffasdf 7y agoWould be nice to have an actual y-axis on those charts. No way to tell the difference between near zero and zero for the various schools.
- jknz 7y agoThe take-away from this is that - several (maybe most) state universities in the US publish the salaries of their professors. Some state universities publish comprehensive (creepy?) granular data, e.g., a spreadsheet with each row displaying professor name, professor salary, rank, department. - aggregated statistics (across all fields, all ranks, tenure-track/non-tenure-track, etc) are useless because of the variance. If you are getting an offer from a professor position, you can get very precise salary expectations by looking at this granular data. For instance, lookup the salary of professors in the hiring department joined a year or two before your offer. GlassDoor information pales in comparison.
- chris11 7y ago> several (maybe most) state universities in the US publish the salaries of their professors. I'd expand this to state governments. It depends on the state, but for some states you can find a lot of detailed salary information.
- joshuamorton 7y ago> several (maybe most) state universities in the US publish the salaries of their professors. Some state universities publish comprehensive (creepy?) granular data, e.g., a spreadsheet with each row displaying professor name, professor salary, rank, department. My understanding is this is practically a requirement for government employees, so if the university is public, this data must be provided. Similarly, you can look up the salary/pay for most other government employees, although they're usually strict to scales.
- klank 7y ago> aggregated statistics (across all fields, all ranks, tenure-track/non-tenure-track, etc) are useless because of the variance Could you expound on that? How does the variance in underlying data cause aggregated statistics to lose usefulness?
- jknz 7y agoSay you receive an offer for a specific position in a specific department and hope to negotiate a better salary. Aggregated data averaged across all fields, all universities and all ranks is not useful. However, the salaries of recent hires, for the same specific position, in the same field at comparable universities will give objective data (and possibly leverage) to negotiate your offer.
- ineedasername 7y agoAdjunct/non-tenure faculty should be kept in mind. Depending on the school, somewhere between 40% and 70% is quite typical for instructors that are not paid a salaried wage. Instead, they typically received a certain amount per course taught. The overall average for this is about $3,000/course, but I believe this is brought down by small private & for-profit schools. At a typical public school $4000/course is a good rule of thumb. Teaching more than 4 courses is a significant load, and some schools limit it to 3 or 4 courses/semester, but let's assume 4 courses in the spring, 4 in the fall, 2 in the summer. That puts the yearly gross at $40,000/year. That's probably a livable wage in many parts of the country, but keep in mind this does not include things like sick or vacation pay, health insurance, retirement plans, or other benefits. EDIT: I should point out that the above is, for the most part, a best-case scenario for adjuncts. It often isn't possible to get full teaching loads, or doing so requires piecing together a course here or there at multiple schools. Income in the $25,000 range is not uncommon.
- analog31 7y agoI was an adjunct for one semester, many years ago. I mentioned my experiences to my mom, who is a retired high school teacher. Her response: "Now you know why teachers have a union."
- ineedasername 7y ago>It's even worse than you paint it, for a lot of adjuncts. Yes, I specifically showed an optimistic picture of adjunct work so it didn't seem like I was tanking the numbers, but I should have said as much. I've gone back and edited it to reflect that my presentation is more of a best-case scenario.
- cgoecknerwald 7y agoI think you meant to reply to ska's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20206480 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20206480
- ModernMech 7y agoIf you want some real data for computer science, there is a survey conducted every year on this topic: https://cra.org/resources/taulbee-survey/ https://cra.org/resources/taulbee-survey/ This is broken down by region, size of school, state vs. local, seniority, title, etc.
- seancoleman 7y agoI’m an adjunct faculty at ASU and make $4,000/year for one course. This stipend is a nice gesture but I do it for the kids.
- chirau 7y agoWhat happens if you teach multiple sections of the same course? Like a morning section and an evening section? Do you get paid double or once?
- seancoleman 7y agoASU explicitly disallows adjunct faculty from holding multiple courses. I have no idea why.
- tombert 7y agoThis depresses me a bit. I make substantially more than the average professor, and I'm just an eccentric dropout working at a big megacorporation. I would like to do research full-time some day, but considering that completing my bachelors and then getting my PhD can get incredibly expensive, it gives me pause if I know that my salary is going to be cut in half in the process.
- kd0amg 7y agoA professor typically isn't working full-time on research either.
- chrisseaton 7y agoYou can do full-time research in your megacorporation on your current salary or higher, probably.
- tombert 7y agoProbably, I work for a tech company, pretty tricky to get that to those positions without a PhD though. Not 100% sure how I'd get a PhD while working full time; after emailing dozens of professors in the NYC area about this, none of them got back to me about that. Anyway, my point in the previous post though, and I realize that I didn't express this terribly clearly, was that it's a bit upsetting that people who work really hard and dedicate themselves enough to become a professor end up making a pretty pathetic amount of money in proportion to their effort.
- kkylin 7y agoI'm not sure how meaningful this analysis is. First, as others have noted, just having the word "professor" in the title doesn't mean much: both a full, tenured professor and an untenured, adjunct professor would have the word "professor." (In my field, mathematics, postdoctoral positions are often called "visiting assistant professors"; these are not tenure-track positions.) Second, again as others noted, salary varies widely across fields, e.g., a med school professor will be paid a lot more than an English professor. Just looking at nominal salary also misses out on important subtleties. For example, med school professors primarily doing research are often expected to pay their own salaries out of grants (since many of them do very little teaching or practice medicine), whereas clinical professors (e.g., those who teach in hospitals) get a salary. The former category is much less stable as it is contingent upon sustained research funding, but the second will not leave time for research (nor would it be expected). Source: I'm tenured at an R1 university in the US.
- azhenley 7y agoWhen I was on the academic job market in 2017/2018, most of the CS faculty positions I was applying to paid between 95-115k as the 9 month salary. So with summary salary from your startup funds/grants it would pay a total salary of 115-140k (assuming 2 months summer salary, which is common). That is not bad. The university/department ranking seemed to affect the salary only a little. The cost of living surprisingly affected the salary very little. This means you could make 130k while living in an extremely cheap area, but living in an expensive area you would not make much more. Of course, many fields don't pay anywhere near that. Some pay quite a bit more (business!). Disclaimer: I'm tenure-track faculty at a public R1 university.
- rflrob 7y agoAnecdotally based on some skimming of the California version of the salary database, there seems to be greater variation between fields than between universities. My wife is in the humanities, and the mid-career salaries of the professors at UCs in her field seem to be about the starting range for UC professors in mine (biology). If you are currently tenure track at an R1, I would expect that most of your other offers were from a similar tier. So while there may not be a huge difference in salaries between the top-ranked and the 30th ranked school in your discipline, there likely is one between the 30th ranked and the 300th or 1,000th. I'd be curious to see the analysis in the linked article run on the California data, where there are multiple top-tier research universities as well an extensive CSU system. Maybe I'm even the person to do that analysis...
- azhenley 7y agoAn analysis like that would be very interesting to see. Despite a lot of this data being public, I haven't seen any useful analyses of it (e.g., they always mix different fields or lump adjuncts in). It would be helpful if I could select a field, a position (e.g., assistant prof), a range of school rankings, number of years since hired (e.g., hired last year), and a geographical region, and see the salary data.
- yomly 7y agoNot to be condescending, but I should hope area of study should influence expected earnings of an academic. I hope it's not too much of a stretch to see the difference between a professor of medicine and medieval tapestry or Viking theology
- throwaway8480 7y agoI think the data here are unfortunately pretty hard to interpret, in part because: - it's not clear if summer salary is included. Most tenure-track faculty in the U.S. are on a nine-month contract (sometimes paid out over nine months, and sometimes over 12), and this "salary" notionally comes from tuition or the state government. But many faculty in the sciences and engineering are also paid a "summary salary" that comes out of grant funding (typically grant funding that the faculty member participated in raising) or from the startup funding provided by the university to new faculty. This can increase a professor's total annual cash compensation by 33%. - this is looking at salaries of public universities in one state. - there can be a huge variation between disciplines (e.g. history vs. computer science vs. law vs. medicine) or between seniorities. Also between tenure-track faculty and everybody else (adjuncts, lecturers and instructors, teaching-track professors). - professors often go on leave or otherwise aren't fully paid throughout the year, which can distort the average per-capita figures. - professors in high cost-of-living areas sometimes receive important non-cash compensation from the univeresity, e.g. the university will provide below-market-rate rental apartments or originate mortgages. - professors in law and engineering typically have other ways to make money that aren't generally afforded to other private-sector employees, e.g. professors receive "consulting privileges" (the lawyers can do legal work in private practice, and professors can consult n days per year), and they personally receive around 30% of the patent revenue that the university collects (for patents invented by the professor in their academic work and assigned to the university), etc. One data point: I am an assistant professor (the lowest tenure-track rank) for a large private university in the U.S. in an engineering department in a high cost-of-living area, and my pre-tax cash compensation from the university is more than $225,000/year, included my summer salary that comes out of my grants, but not including the FMV of the below-market-rate mortgage benefit that the university offers to faculty and not counting consulting on the side. So not close to industry money, but a lot higher than the numbers in this article and higher than I think most people realize a junior engineering professor can make.
- purplezooey 7y agoI like how we just casually analyze public salaries but if you did this for any comparably large company, it would be far, far more f'd up.
- RickJWagner 7y agoWow. All those college bucks are not going to Prof salaries.
- cosmodisk 7y agoTl;dr Not much...
- markc 7y agoThe highest paid professor in the University of Massachusetts System makes $468k/year. Of the state's highest paid employees, 58 of 60 work for UMass. (Top non-UMass employee comes in at #32) http://cthrupayroll.mass.gov/#!/year/2018/full_time_employees,others/pay1,pay2,pay3,pay4/explore/0-0-0/trans_no http://cthrupayroll.mass.gov/#!/year/2018/full_time_employee...