> Most academic professors in CS are mentoring much more than one PhD students over the course of their academic careers, yes? Let's take a look at this oft-re

> Most academic professors in CS are mentoring much more than one PhD students over the course of their academic careers, yes? Let's take a look at this oft-repeated claim. If we consider the Taulbee CS department survey [0], we can see the breakdown of the CS faculty population. Based on the survey, we see 32% are old-guard full professors, 16% associate professors, 20% assistant professors, 20% teaching faculty, 5% research faculty, and 5% postdocs. These are all positions with a PhD as a requirement. This tells us that about 49% of the CS department faculty has tenure, while 51% is either working toward it or will never have it. Within that 51% there's a lot of churn. Many in that group will fail to achieve tenure. Others will work for a 3-5 year contract and move on afterward. That's also not to say that tenured faculty never quit. Some leave academia for industry. Others go on sabbatical. Others leave for the NSF or some other institution. Others are poached by another department for a chair position. Some will leave once their spouse gets tenure at a superior institution. Others will go home to their native country. So while it is true there are only so many positions, openings are happening all the time. If you look at where CS PhDs are going after they graduate, we see that ~55% are going straight into industry, while only 30% are sticking around to find an academic job. This is a testament to the draw of industry in the CS field, and doesn't even capture the draw for faculty, which can be much stronger (much higher comps offered for experienced researchers as opposed to newly minted PhDs). [0] https://cra.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/2020-CRA-Taulbee-Survey.pdf https://cra.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/2020-CRA-Taulbee-...