2 ms·

I'm not going to name names here but I'm aware of at least one person whose title is a "named" Assistant Professor and one whose title is (from what I can tell

• redis_mlc 6y ago
  Generally in the US there's no career path to becoming a tenured professor. (A lot of assistant professors, etc. sleep in their cars.) You would have to have the right connections, or publish papers that were undeniably brilliant. (ie. be a celebrity.)
  • papeda 6y ago
    > Generally in the US there's no career path to becoming a tenured professor. It's true that, in general, there are far more graduating PhD students every year than tenure-track faculty positions. But I think "no career path" drastically overstates the difficulty. It's way easier than making it as a pro athlete, for example. > A lot of assistant professors, etc. sleep in their cars. Are you thinking of adjunct professors, who are not tenure-track? Assistant professors typically make at least 50k+, and in the more lucrative fields (computer science, business schools, biopharm I think) >100k is common. > You would have to have the right connections, or publish papers that were undeniably brilliant. (ie. be a celebrity.) You're correct that an average PhD student will probably not get any tenure-track faculty interviews, let alone offers. This is especially true in more resource-constrained fields like the humanities.