There 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).
How much are professors paid?
21–30 of 83 posts
Re: How much are professors paid?
#22Good 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!
Re: How much are professors paid?
#23Would 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.
Re: How much are professors paid?
#24Something 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.
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Re: How much are professors paid?
#25Good 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!
Haha, right. I searched for "axis" to see if anyone was making this point before I re-made it.
Re: How much are professors paid?
#26Something 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.
My 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.
Re: How much are professors paid?
#27Not 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.
It 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.
Re: How much are professors paid?
#28The 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.
Re: How much are professors paid?
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Almost everyone except the adjuncts, which might be a small number at some R1 institutions, but might be a lot more common elsewhere.
Their title is literally "adjunct professor". They would show up in this graph as "professor".
Maybe. 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.
Re: How much are professors paid?
#30Adjunct/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.