> 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

> 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.