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How much are professors paid?

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Re: How much are professors paid?

#61

Post by azhenley »

rflrob wrote: post #60
azhenley wrote: post #44

When 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 a…

Anecdotally 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 offer…

An 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.

Re: How much are professors paid?

#62

Post by yomly »

rflrob wrote: post #60
azhenley wrote: post #44

When 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 a…

Anecdotally 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 offer…

Not 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

Re: How much are professors paid?

#63

Post by arkades »

mynameishere wrote: post #57
analog31 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 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."

Because the price determined by the market is wrong. Wrong! I wish taxpayers had a union.

Most adjuncts are in the business of selling their services to effective monopsonies. Oligopolies, at best. Free market economics don’t exonerate the result.

Re: How much are professors paid?

#64

Post by cgoecknerwald »

ineedasername wrote: post #52
analog31 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 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."

>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.

I think you meant to reply to ska's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20206480

Re: How much are professors paid?

#65

Post by ineedasername »

analog31 wrote: post #46
ineedasername wrote: post #30

Adjunct/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…

I 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."

Yes, I had the same experience. I work in higher ed, and occasionally teach a course, maybe once a year. It's good to pickup a little extra $$ with little inconvenience since I can just walk over to the classroom at the end of my workday. It also keeps me in touch with the on-the-ground reality of both faculty and student life, a perspective that gives me great context for my normal job. But the amount of work it takes for even a single course really illustrates just how low the pay is for the time required. And where I work the adjuncts actually DO have a union, but all it's been able to accomplish are modest increases in pay and the ability to buy into the health benefits plan. Not that they get health benefits, they still have to pay the full price for the premiums, they simply have access to do so. And if it's a family plan, the premium could actually come close to costing a majority of their pay. So I'm not sure how much of a "win" that was for the union.

Re: How much are professors paid?

#66

Post by ineedasername »

ska wrote: post #47
ineedasername wrote: post #30

Adjunct/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…

It's even worse than you paint it, for a lot of adjuncts. Besides the lack of benefits and insurance, often they do not actually know their course allocations in advance, and can suddenly end up losing 1/2 their income or whatever, with a week or so's notice. For comparison if you are full time faculty at a research (i.e. R1) oriented department, a 1-1 or 1-2 (e.g. 2 - 3 courses a year) is typically considered a full…

>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.

Re: How much are professors paid?

#67

Post by ineedasername »

babyslothzoo wrote: post #58
ineedasername wrote: post #30

Adjunct/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…

> Adjunct/non-tenure faculty should be kept in mind. Absolutely. Most adjuncts and non-tenured professors are paid surprisingly low wages, and many colleges are relying more and more on them (probably because they're so much cheaper).

It's hard to blame the schools too much, at least for public college's and universities. In most states Higher Ed budgets are first on the chopping block for cuts. Even when they're not cut, they frequently remain flat for years, and with inflation that amounts to a Dr facto budget cut.

This dynamic places a downward pressure on what institutions are able to spend of human resources. Adjuncts proliferate, and so do certain types of part time hourly jobs (little/no benefits) that are typical administrative tasks. I'm familiar with an example where fully half of their professional academic advising staff were hourly non-benefit. And quality advising is actually a revenue center, keeping students on track, helping when problems arise that might otherwise prevent a student from continuing their education.

Re: How much are professors paid?

#68

Post by ineedasername »

cgoecknerwald wrote: post #64
ineedasername wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

I think you meant to reply to ska's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20206480

Oh, thanks. I can no longer edit/delete this, but I reposted to their comment.

Re: How much are professors paid?

#69

Post by ineedasername »

mynameishere wrote: post #57
analog31 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 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."

Because the price determined by the market is wrong. Wrong! I wish taxpayers had a union.

Tax payers sort of do have a union where the collective bargaining takes place in the form of electing official to work on their behalf. Often enough though, those elected end up working against the intersts of voters, sometimes explicitly advocating for policies that voters don't realize are not in their interests.

Not unlike unions that hire a negotiator to work on their behalf, if the negotiator ignored the contractual priorities given to them by the unions.

Re: How much are professors paid?

#70

Post by analog31 »

mynameishere wrote: post #57
analog31 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 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."

Because the price determined by the market is wrong. Wrong! I wish taxpayers had a union.

Taxpayers do have a union. The taxpayer's union in my state outlawed the teacher's union.
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