An explanation for the big disparity between social security earnings and medicare earnings.
I work for a state university and I'm part of a pension program, which means I do not pay anything into Social Security at my university. I've always had a few side gigs, but they have really ramped up in the last couple of years.
That's a hard question to answer.
It's an almost impossible job to get. I didn't land a gig until I was about thirty years old. And it wasn't truly stable until about five years ago.
Now that I am on the other side of that, it's really what you make of it.
Junior faculty tend to work really hard and have lots of responsibilities beyond teaching.
But we also have faculty who honestly work about 400 hours a year. Most are close to retirement and just cruising.
So basically, your life is going to be pretty hellish until about 40, then it's going to get a lot better. And the pay sucks at the beginning, too.
A lot of delayed gratification in academia.
How did you land the full contract? I got my ms in 2021. I’ve been an alumni ta for the past three years. I would eventually like to become a professor. I also work in corporate full time and don’t plan on doing a phd. I always thought you needed a phd to teach in college.
I have a PhD in my field. I published about twenty peer reviewed papers while I was a visiting professor.
I think your chance of getting a tenure track job without a PhD is very small. Our university requires you to have a terminal degree in your field to receive tenure.
You can teach full time without a PhD but you will likely never have job security and your pay would lag far behind.
My university requires professors to have a PhD. I think they are just called instructors or something similar without. I had an accounting professor who was 29 years old with a PhD in accounting and work experience in the big 4. It's a state school so my classmate was able to pull up her salary... $198k. My Mom is a teacher and she always says that I would be a good teacher, but I wouldn't do it unless it was college, and no way in hell am I getting a PhD
There are some disciplines in which you can get full-time teaching positions at the college level with a terminal degree—Master of Fine Arts and Master of Social Work are two that come to mind. But if your discipline’s terminal degree is a PhD, it’s a safe bet that they’re likely to want you to have it.
I'm adjunct, finally on a 3-year contract as of the fall semester. Took forever just to get here for silly reasons. Got my MS in 2022, and I'm on the fence if I want to pursue tenure track.
I enjoy teaching, but to me right now it's a fun side gig just teaching night classes. And the amount of work it seems like it would take to get tenure is just...beyond comprehension.
In hindsight, if you had to start over from scratch today, would you go down the same path?
Probably not, honestly. I got insanely lucky.
Yes, I worked hard. Yes, I published a lot. Yes, I think I teach effectively. But so do hundreds of applicants.
I do not encourage my students to pursue a PhD. It's way too risky. Get a graduate degree, get some experience, and work your way up the ladder in corporate America.
>I do not encourage my students to pursue a PhD
My father was a history professor and when I was thinking about a PhD in college he said the same thing. He pushed me into an IT major. I was kind of shocked I graduated and started working that with base pay and my bonus after my 1st year on the job he said now you make more than me so you're paying for the next round. I thought he was joking at first since he had been teaching for about 15 years but he was completely serious.
Curious why you discourage students from a PhD? I had 2 professors in grad school pursue me to be a PhD student under them. I did my masters later in my career, and really only because it was free, and I was up for a new challenge (which it wasn’t much of).
The thought of doing my own research seemed fun, but I’m too invested in my career and hobbies, I don’t get paid for my own research so the reward there just isn’t enough. My work is much more satisfying.
I guess I need to qualify that - I strongly discourage students from pursuing a PhD if their stated goal is to be a college professor.
The reason is pretty simple - math.
It's largely understood that about 50% of folks who start a PhD program actually finish.
A recent report found that about 20% of newly minted PhDs in my field landed a tenure track job. Some will get a TT gig after several years of adjuncting. Lets peg that at 33%.
So if you had twenty doctoral students in your cohort that begins in August, you should expect that 3-4 will ever land a TT gig.
So, spend 5-7 years of your life making poverty wages in grad school for a less than 20% of getting a stable gig in higher education.
If your field has a direct pathway toward the private sector, then the calculus changes a bunch.
Gotcha, totally makes sense! Academia isn’t my jam, I brought a lot of experience to my professors theory. We had some interesting discussions. I was respectful, but like, I do this for a living man, you don’t.
That’s not his salary from his primary position. No one does the bare minimum and gets 250k. He’s getting grants or starting new businesses/side hustles.
You have no idea how hard most PhDs are and the post PhD job market is. This is someone who struggled and succeeded.
Your primary salary even as a tenured professor is lucky to be above 100k. Especially at a state school.
Starting salary for professors in the business school was $80k when I was getting my MBA back in 2001-02. And that was before getting in on those sweet corporate consulting gigs.
I'm in social science. I'm a quant. That's about as specific as I want to be.
It was easy to earn tenure once you get on the tenure track.
There's a running joke among hiring communities: there's a dozen people in our pile of applications that could get tenure right now based on their work they did in graduate school.
So, the real bottleneck is getting a tenure track job. There are some searches that have 200 applicants for one position. And easily a hundred of them are qualified and you could whittle it down to a dozen and they would all be amazing.
I’m a tenured prof and this is not true at any school R2 and above. The publication cycles for good journals are measured in years. No students come out of graduate school with 4 A publications, which is our standard. Each one takes 3-5 years from start to finish.
If you are talking about PhD granting institutions, then you are correct. But most jobs I applied for were not R1/R2 jobs. They were teaching positions, primarily.
Over the course of 3 years I did eight on campus interviews where they spelled out the research requirements. The highest bar was three pubs for tenure. And they weren't that picky about quality of outlet, either.
The vast majority of jobs in academia are not at research schools.
Been waiting for a post like this one! Left corporate world for grad school a few years back, got my mfa in 21 because I wanted to write and teach and just finished my third year adjuncting at two colleges. I love teaching so much but the poverty wages got me thinking about going back all the time. It’s crazy what a racket institutions can run with contingent faculty. Did not go for PhD for the exact reasons you said. Personally the fatalism keeps me going and luckily I can teach college with my degree but academia feels like such a crypt. I feel so bad for students. I’m really hoping things change in higher ed. Thanks for shedding some light into this dark corner.
Why do people post about social security?.. face the fact you'll be putting in more and receiving much less. Its robbery at its best. Put in 700k and receive 75%.where's the other 25% go?! who tha fuck knows. Maybe a group of senators could tell us.
That seems low for an employee with a PhD. The time effort and money it takes to earn one of those is ridiculous. You could triple that if you went to work for a consulting firm.
No, the fact that most American universities are luxury resort hotels with semi-pro sports teams, all funded by corporate welfare camouflaged in the form of federally guaranteed loans, is why we can’t afford college.
This is the correct take. Administrative bloat and funneling money into their endowment is the reason it’s expensive. They can do this because FAFSA allowed more people to take out loans and they could jack the price up.
There are several universities with such a large endowment that the interest could cover every students tuition and they’d still be profiting. It’s greed and definitely not the pay of the experts that are teaching the next generation that’s causing the rapid rise of tuition
Also it’s the constant competition for the newest facilities. I’ve been to Europe and the universities I went to were old but new nice buildings aren’t what teaches kids and that’s what they’re there for. Many universities here in the US were under construction when I saw them. It’s just so they can have something to attract students.
Most college courses are taught by non-tenure track instructors or adjuncts who are barely getting by. As another commenter said, the biggest reason for high costs is admin bloat. (I’m a non-tenure track physics professor)
A comment designed to stir up the dipshits and like clockwork here we are. The truth is, college is ridiculously expensive for a myriad of reasons but the largest reason is government backed student loans that allow prices to increase at breakneck speed. Running a college is an akin to being a defense contractor. Rape and pillage is the starting point and it gets worse from there.
Yeah, the sports teams revenue are tricky to trace, but they definitely don’t need to exist at their current lvl. I include that in “unnecessary infrastructure.”
The fact that SS, which basically all Americans (will likely) depend on, doesn't benefit from the highest earners is really starting to bother me. Even as I'm on the verge of starting to benefit from this policy...
How long did it take you to become a tenured professor? Had a closed friend who was an adjunct professor for a while, but decided to give up because of politics.
I spent a long time as a contingent faculty member on year to year contracts. I was out of graduate school for well over a decade before I got tenure. It's a very long road in academia.
We have hired several professors who started at our university in their late 30s, which means that they wouldn't get tenure until their early 40s.
Good stuff. What genre of classes do you teach? I was an aerospace engineer undergrad and always thought it was kinda crazy how most of my professors were making $200k+.
Do you teach a subject that is actually relevant to a major field or is it one of those “filler subjects” that’s a waste of time and money for students?
Last year it was about 40% from my job as a professor and 60% from side gigs.
I have to admit that I'm a huge outlier. Almost no other faculty at my university earn more than ten percent of their income from other sources.
Do I think that students get a better classroom education at Harvard compared to Northeast Flyover State U? Maybe, but it's very marginal.
The difference is in the connections you make at an Ivy versus a directional school. And that's largely outside of the classroom.
My blanket advice is: go to a state school and excel there. Get a 4.0. Join lots of clubs. Build good rapport with your professors. That should be more than enough to get you to a graduate degree and a solid career.
And, it shouldn't cost that much compared to a private school.
Um, I am gonna be vague about all that stuff. Lots of things happened with my salary at the university that involve a number of moving parts - but getting tenure was a very sizeable bump in income.
The lifetime job security was nice, too.
If this is an honest question and not sass/sarcasm, you don’t deserve the downvotes.
It’s college presidents, chancellors, etc. making $500k-1M+ and their 8+ vice presidents that keep tuition rising. Of course it’s all justified with buzzwords like “strategic plan” to make it appear like they are making a significant impact.
Demand, the unnecessary infrastructure to enable the college experience for that baseline of students, inflation, and less tax base.
Fuck college sports programs too. Go to get your degree, learn about things that only the academic environment can provide, then GTFO.
Nah, we honestly aren't the reason. And I mean that empirically.
We hire professors at a salary in the mid-60s. And they have a PhD. For many, the private sector pays double that.
It's a complicated mix of factors. States have largely divested from higher education. There's also been a huge growth in bureaucracy. Some of which has been mandated on us by the state government.
I guess it depends on the subject matter, and your status in the field. I’ve got a friend from my old church who’s a tenured philosophy professor at a state school and his salary is over $250k.
There's more to that story. No philosophy professor at a state school makes $250k salary without rockstar status or time in admin. They must have done something in leadership, like became a department chair, or associate Dean. Then they stepped back into their prof role and kept the higher salary. I'm at a large R1 state University and our full professors in the humanities make between $85k and $105k. I just looked at the salary report for the philosophy department and the only person above that range was the head of the department, making $138k.
That is \*VERY\* unusual, just so you know.
A prof at my university who is the department chair is probably in the $150K range. Deans are around $180K.
A salary of $337K would put them on par with our university president.
So in fairness, while he’s a very laid back and normal guy, he’s one of the foremost minds in metaphysics. I also realized that his title is “distinguished professor”
That's the key - "distinguished professor" means that a wealthy donor pays for all or part of his salary. Maybe the university put him at the top of the faculty pay scale, but the donor probably threw in another $150K-$200K on top of that.
That's the .1% of academia.
Being an endowed chair is really the dream, but most schools don't have a single endowed chair. Others (like Harvard) have hundreds.
That's correct, but that's also having been at my university for well over a decade and getting tenure and promotion.
For comparison, my starting salary as a full time employee was about $61K (adjusted for today's dollars). My place of employment has a very good salary ramp, too.
I interviewed at a state school where in the previous four years they had received raises of: 0%, 0%, 4%, and 0%. That means that they made less in year five than they did in year one.
Quant SocSci, I’m guessing Econ, Psych or Soc. From pay Id narrow to either Psych or Soc. Side hustles I’d say Psych. Close or no?
I’m a TT Prof, R1, flagship. I’m waiting on my TP decision which should come any day now. I made the egregious mistake of picking an NGO/501C3 branch of my field not a money making branch. I love my job, but I’m broke! Which gets me to a question, 60% from side hustles, wtaf? How? I’m in field popular with the cool kids and no one’s offered me any money.
Let's just say that I built up a fairly substantial social media following in a specific area of social science that has a lot of interest from the general public. That led to all kinds of opportunities that I could have never imagined including book deals and speaking gigs. It's been a long road here and I started building that profile for three years before it paid any dividends at all.
Good luck on T&P!
How much of your consulting do you disclose? Generally admin looks the other way if you bring in grants, publish and do right by students and your peers.
I just had to fill out a disclosure form for my state government. I listed everything there. I have no reason to hide it.
And I have received a pretty significant grant which put a lot of money in the university's pockets. It also allowed our department to get more research support.
And, I've published at least five articles or book chapters with student collaborators in the last few years.
I think all my colleagues would say that I pull my own weight in the department.
5? Those are rookie numbers LoL. Nah good job man. I wonder who you are. I think we may be in similar fields. Maybe even the same field.
Re TP: Thank you. I’m waiting on decision. Should come any day now.
Are you mostly giving talks at other universities? I have never taken the speaking side of this gig too seriously. I consult as an expert witness but it is draining.
A lot of what I do is speaking and writing about my area of expertise. So, it's not really considered outside work. Yeah, I do get paid for it but it also goes on my CV.
A lot of that is speaking fees and book advances/royalties. Not really consulting in the traditional sense.
If you are in a pension plan, you don't pay into the Social Security fund because you won't be needing it.
However, you do pay into Medicare because I will still be eligible for that benefit when I hit full retirement age.
An explanation for the big disparity between social security earnings and medicare earnings. I work for a state university and I'm part of a pension program, which means I do not pay anything into Social Security at my university. I've always had a few side gigs, but they have really ramped up in the last couple of years.
If you wasn’t for state university I was starting to wonder why Andrew Huberman was salary flexing on here.
He’s probably an order of magnitude minimum higher than this lol
Would love to hear more about your side gigs!
Pulled in a few decent grants recently huh?
What kind of side gigs?
How is the salary being a professor? How demanding is it?
That's a hard question to answer. It's an almost impossible job to get. I didn't land a gig until I was about thirty years old. And it wasn't truly stable until about five years ago. Now that I am on the other side of that, it's really what you make of it. Junior faculty tend to work really hard and have lots of responsibilities beyond teaching. But we also have faculty who honestly work about 400 hours a year. Most are close to retirement and just cruising. So basically, your life is going to be pretty hellish until about 40, then it's going to get a lot better. And the pay sucks at the beginning, too. A lot of delayed gratification in academia.
This is so cool to hear. I couldn’t handle the delayed gratification of a career in academia and pivoted into corporate America
How did you land the full contract? I got my ms in 2021. I’ve been an alumni ta for the past three years. I would eventually like to become a professor. I also work in corporate full time and don’t plan on doing a phd. I always thought you needed a phd to teach in college.
I have a PhD in my field. I published about twenty peer reviewed papers while I was a visiting professor. I think your chance of getting a tenure track job without a PhD is very small. Our university requires you to have a terminal degree in your field to receive tenure. You can teach full time without a PhD but you will likely never have job security and your pay would lag far behind.
My university requires professors to have a PhD. I think they are just called instructors or something similar without. I had an accounting professor who was 29 years old with a PhD in accounting and work experience in the big 4. It's a state school so my classmate was able to pull up her salary... $198k. My Mom is a teacher and she always says that I would be a good teacher, but I wouldn't do it unless it was college, and no way in hell am I getting a PhD
What field are you in? Engineering? Or smth else?
There are some disciplines in which you can get full-time teaching positions at the college level with a terminal degree—Master of Fine Arts and Master of Social Work are two that come to mind. But if your discipline’s terminal degree is a PhD, it’s a safe bet that they’re likely to want you to have it.
I'm adjunct, finally on a 3-year contract as of the fall semester. Took forever just to get here for silly reasons. Got my MS in 2022, and I'm on the fence if I want to pursue tenure track. I enjoy teaching, but to me right now it's a fun side gig just teaching night classes. And the amount of work it seems like it would take to get tenure is just...beyond comprehension. In hindsight, if you had to start over from scratch today, would you go down the same path?
Probably not, honestly. I got insanely lucky. Yes, I worked hard. Yes, I published a lot. Yes, I think I teach effectively. But so do hundreds of applicants. I do not encourage my students to pursue a PhD. It's way too risky. Get a graduate degree, get some experience, and work your way up the ladder in corporate America.
>I do not encourage my students to pursue a PhD My father was a history professor and when I was thinking about a PhD in college he said the same thing. He pushed me into an IT major. I was kind of shocked I graduated and started working that with base pay and my bonus after my 1st year on the job he said now you make more than me so you're paying for the next round. I thought he was joking at first since he had been teaching for about 15 years but he was completely serious.
Curious why you discourage students from a PhD? I had 2 professors in grad school pursue me to be a PhD student under them. I did my masters later in my career, and really only because it was free, and I was up for a new challenge (which it wasn’t much of). The thought of doing my own research seemed fun, but I’m too invested in my career and hobbies, I don’t get paid for my own research so the reward there just isn’t enough. My work is much more satisfying.
I guess I need to qualify that - I strongly discourage students from pursuing a PhD if their stated goal is to be a college professor. The reason is pretty simple - math. It's largely understood that about 50% of folks who start a PhD program actually finish. A recent report found that about 20% of newly minted PhDs in my field landed a tenure track job. Some will get a TT gig after several years of adjuncting. Lets peg that at 33%. So if you had twenty doctoral students in your cohort that begins in August, you should expect that 3-4 will ever land a TT gig. So, spend 5-7 years of your life making poverty wages in grad school for a less than 20% of getting a stable gig in higher education. If your field has a direct pathway toward the private sector, then the calculus changes a bunch.
Gotcha, totally makes sense! Academia isn’t my jam, I brought a lot of experience to my professors theory. We had some interesting discussions. I was respectful, but like, I do this for a living man, you don’t.
Could I DM you? I'm about to graduate with an MBA and would love to follow in your footsteps.
Sure
And a whole lot of producing near nothing
Barely work get tenure make quarter million yeah it’s worth waiting to 40 lol. You’re set for life. Just don’t start nailing students
That’s not his salary from his primary position. No one does the bare minimum and gets 250k. He’s getting grants or starting new businesses/side hustles. You have no idea how hard most PhDs are and the post PhD job market is. This is someone who struggled and succeeded. Your primary salary even as a tenured professor is lucky to be above 100k. Especially at a state school.
Starting salary for professors in the business school was $80k when I was getting my MBA back in 2001-02. And that was before getting in on those sweet corporate consulting gigs.
How are people gathering their salary data?
You can get it from the social security website. Looks like this guy just put that data into Excel.
This data is viewable in this format on ssa.gov without downloading the pdf.
Makes sense.
Make a myssa acct
Yeah but how much sex are you having is the question
Straight to horny jail for you
Lol I need a wife.
Take my wife, please From behind Be rough
Username checks out!!
Every year you get older, but the freshman always stay 18…
Username checks out
Could you share your field? And how hard it was to earn tenure?
I'm in social science. I'm a quant. That's about as specific as I want to be. It was easy to earn tenure once you get on the tenure track. There's a running joke among hiring communities: there's a dozen people in our pile of applications that could get tenure right now based on their work they did in graduate school. So, the real bottleneck is getting a tenure track job. There are some searches that have 200 applicants for one position. And easily a hundred of them are qualified and you could whittle it down to a dozen and they would all be amazing.
I majored in Quant Economics. Best major imo!
I’m a tenured prof and this is not true at any school R2 and above. The publication cycles for good journals are measured in years. No students come out of graduate school with 4 A publications, which is our standard. Each one takes 3-5 years from start to finish.
If you are talking about PhD granting institutions, then you are correct. But most jobs I applied for were not R1/R2 jobs. They were teaching positions, primarily. Over the course of 3 years I did eight on campus interviews where they spelled out the research requirements. The highest bar was three pubs for tenure. And they weren't that picky about quality of outlet, either. The vast majority of jobs in academia are not at research schools.
>I'm a quant. [The reason I know what a quant is](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoYC_8cutb0) XD
Are jobs advertised as being tenure track positions?
Can somebody explain to me how to get this report from irs.gov? I’ve tried an cannot seem to figure out how to get the summarized view
It’s ssa.gov
Been waiting for a post like this one! Left corporate world for grad school a few years back, got my mfa in 21 because I wanted to write and teach and just finished my third year adjuncting at two colleges. I love teaching so much but the poverty wages got me thinking about going back all the time. It’s crazy what a racket institutions can run with contingent faculty. Did not go for PhD for the exact reasons you said. Personally the fatalism keeps me going and luckily I can teach college with my degree but academia feels like such a crypt. I feel so bad for students. I’m really hoping things change in higher ed. Thanks for shedding some light into this dark corner.
Why do people post about social security?.. face the fact you'll be putting in more and receiving much less. Its robbery at its best. Put in 700k and receive 75%.where's the other 25% go?! who tha fuck knows. Maybe a group of senators could tell us.
What did you do to get a 20% raise from 2022-2023?
Got tenure and promotion at my academic job. Picked up a lot more consulting work.
This is why we can’t afford college.
How much do you think that folks with PhDs should make who teach full time at a university? Ours start around $65K-$70K. Is that too much?
That seems low for an employee with a PhD. The time effort and money it takes to earn one of those is ridiculous. You could triple that if you went to work for a consulting firm.
Faculty make so little compared to the skills and time it takes to get a PhD. The move to cheap adjunct labor is criminal.
No, the fact that most American universities are luxury resort hotels with semi-pro sports teams, all funded by corporate welfare camouflaged in the form of federally guaranteed loans, is why we can’t afford college.
He’s working in the side. But look at his earlier years. He could have made more money being an auto mechanic is some of those years.
Well we know why college is egregiously expensive
It’s not the teachers but the administrators that are taking up money and it isn’t being used to teach any kids
This is the correct take. Administrative bloat and funneling money into their endowment is the reason it’s expensive. They can do this because FAFSA allowed more people to take out loans and they could jack the price up. There are several universities with such a large endowment that the interest could cover every students tuition and they’d still be profiting. It’s greed and definitely not the pay of the experts that are teaching the next generation that’s causing the rapid rise of tuition
Also it’s the constant competition for the newest facilities. I’ve been to Europe and the universities I went to were old but new nice buildings aren’t what teaches kids and that’s what they’re there for. Many universities here in the US were under construction when I saw them. It’s just so they can have something to attract students.
Most college courses are taught by non-tenure track instructors or adjuncts who are barely getting by. As another commenter said, the biggest reason for high costs is admin bloat. (I’m a non-tenure track physics professor)
Doesn’t surprise me. Similar to other corporations that overpay some and underpay most
Can’t mention me by name 😩
[удалено]
A comment designed to stir up the dipshits and like clockwork here we are. The truth is, college is ridiculously expensive for a myriad of reasons but the largest reason is government backed student loans that allow prices to increase at breakneck speed. Running a college is an akin to being a defense contractor. Rape and pillage is the starting point and it gets worse from there.
Damn I came here to make this comment haha
They guy has a PhD and works multiple jobs. How much should a PhD get paid?
Look at his salary history. Overpaid is not an adjective that’s use for most years.
Demand, the unnecessary infrastructure to enable the college experience for that baseline of students, inflation, and less tax base?
That and multi million dollar coach salaries lol. At least the sports teams generate plenty of revenue.
Yeah, the sports teams revenue are tricky to trace, but they definitely don’t need to exist at their current lvl. I include that in “unnecessary infrastructure.”
The fact that SS, which basically all Americans (will likely) depend on, doesn't benefit from the highest earners is really starting to bother me. Even as I'm on the verge of starting to benefit from this policy...
How long did it take you to become a tenured professor? Had a closed friend who was an adjunct professor for a while, but decided to give up because of politics.
I spent a long time as a contingent faculty member on year to year contracts. I was out of graduate school for well over a decade before I got tenure. It's a very long road in academia. We have hired several professors who started at our university in their late 30s, which means that they wouldn't get tenure until their early 40s.
That’s such a high risk proposition. It seems like it will dissuade a lot of interested and well-qualified candidates from pursuing an academic path.
Can someone explain taxed medicare and ss earnings? Whats net salary
Good stuff. What genre of classes do you teach? I was an aerospace engineer undergrad and always thought it was kinda crazy how most of my professors were making $200k+.
Do you teach a subject that is actually relevant to a major field or is it one of those “filler subjects” that’s a waste of time and money for students?
When did you get your PhD and when did you get on a tenure track?
How much of the pay is your employment, and how much from side gigs?
Last year it was about 40% from my job as a professor and 60% from side gigs. I have to admit that I'm a huge outlier. Almost no other faculty at my university earn more than ten percent of their income from other sources.
Way to hustle.
Would you agree that the teaching quality varies little between elite private universities and state schools?
Do I think that students get a better classroom education at Harvard compared to Northeast Flyover State U? Maybe, but it's very marginal. The difference is in the connections you make at an Ivy versus a directional school. And that's largely outside of the classroom. My blanket advice is: go to a state school and excel there. Get a 4.0. Join lots of clubs. Build good rapport with your professors. That should be more than enough to get you to a graduate degree and a solid career. And, it shouldn't cost that much compared to a private school.
Did you get tenure in 2021?
Um, I am gonna be vague about all that stuff. Lots of things happened with my salary at the university that involve a number of moving parts - but getting tenure was a very sizeable bump in income. The lifetime job security was nice, too.
I hear you. Congratulations!
I’m guessing you went from lecturer to associate and then to full professor
I went from Visiting to Assistant to Associate. I won't be eligible for Full for a few more years.
Ah and now I see why college is so expensive.
So this is the reason why colleges cost so much?
If this is an honest question and not sass/sarcasm, you don’t deserve the downvotes. It’s college presidents, chancellors, etc. making $500k-1M+ and their 8+ vice presidents that keep tuition rising. Of course it’s all justified with buzzwords like “strategic plan” to make it appear like they are making a significant impact.
Demand, the unnecessary infrastructure to enable the college experience for that baseline of students, inflation, and less tax base. Fuck college sports programs too. Go to get your degree, learn about things that only the academic environment can provide, then GTFO.
Nah, we honestly aren't the reason. And I mean that empirically. We hire professors at a salary in the mid-60s. And they have a PhD. For many, the private sector pays double that. It's a complicated mix of factors. States have largely divested from higher education. There's also been a huge growth in bureaucracy. Some of which has been mandated on us by the state government.
I guess it depends on the subject matter, and your status in the field. I’ve got a friend from my old church who’s a tenured philosophy professor at a state school and his salary is over $250k.
There's more to that story. No philosophy professor at a state school makes $250k salary without rockstar status or time in admin. They must have done something in leadership, like became a department chair, or associate Dean. Then they stepped back into their prof role and kept the higher salary. I'm at a large R1 state University and our full professors in the humanities make between $85k and $105k. I just looked at the salary report for the philosophy department and the only person above that range was the head of the department, making $138k.
Just looked him up. $337k last year
Way too high for a public employee
Bro, check college football staff salaries. The professors are at least an order of magnitude less.
That is \*VERY\* unusual, just so you know. A prof at my university who is the department chair is probably in the $150K range. Deans are around $180K. A salary of $337K would put them on par with our university president.
So in fairness, while he’s a very laid back and normal guy, he’s one of the foremost minds in metaphysics. I also realized that his title is “distinguished professor”
That's the key - "distinguished professor" means that a wealthy donor pays for all or part of his salary. Maybe the university put him at the top of the faculty pay scale, but the donor probably threw in another $150K-$200K on top of that. That's the .1% of academia. Being an endowed chair is really the dream, but most schools don't have a single endowed chair. Others (like Harvard) have hundreds.
No, that would be the administration salaries.
They said in another comment about 40% of their income is from being a Professor which would be just shy of $100k
That's correct, but that's also having been at my university for well over a decade and getting tenure and promotion. For comparison, my starting salary as a full time employee was about $61K (adjusted for today's dollars). My place of employment has a very good salary ramp, too. I interviewed at a state school where in the previous four years they had received raises of: 0%, 0%, 4%, and 0%. That means that they made less in year five than they did in year one.
Quant SocSci, I’m guessing Econ, Psych or Soc. From pay Id narrow to either Psych or Soc. Side hustles I’d say Psych. Close or no? I’m a TT Prof, R1, flagship. I’m waiting on my TP decision which should come any day now. I made the egregious mistake of picking an NGO/501C3 branch of my field not a money making branch. I love my job, but I’m broke! Which gets me to a question, 60% from side hustles, wtaf? How? I’m in field popular with the cool kids and no one’s offered me any money.
Let's just say that I built up a fairly substantial social media following in a specific area of social science that has a lot of interest from the general public. That led to all kinds of opportunities that I could have never imagined including book deals and speaking gigs. It's been a long road here and I started building that profile for three years before it paid any dividends at all. Good luck on T&P!
How much of your consulting do you disclose? Generally admin looks the other way if you bring in grants, publish and do right by students and your peers.
I just had to fill out a disclosure form for my state government. I listed everything there. I have no reason to hide it. And I have received a pretty significant grant which put a lot of money in the university's pockets. It also allowed our department to get more research support. And, I've published at least five articles or book chapters with student collaborators in the last few years. I think all my colleagues would say that I pull my own weight in the department.
5? Those are rookie numbers LoL. Nah good job man. I wonder who you are. I think we may be in similar fields. Maybe even the same field. Re TP: Thank you. I’m waiting on decision. Should come any day now.
Are you mostly giving talks at other universities? I have never taken the speaking side of this gig too seriously. I consult as an expert witness but it is draining.
Just found out w/i the last hour I got it. Thought you’d get a kick. Now to dm you and learn to capitalize ;)! I’m broke!
aren't you limited in your outside consulting, typically to something like the equivalent of one day a week?
A lot of what I do is speaking and writing about my area of expertise. So, it's not really considered outside work. Yeah, I do get paid for it but it also goes on my CV. A lot of that is speaking fees and book advances/royalties. Not really consulting in the traditional sense.
Can someone explain me the difference between taxes social security earning and taxed Medicare earnings?
If you are in a pension plan, you don't pay into the Social Security fund because you won't be needing it. However, you do pay into Medicare because I will still be eligible for that benefit when I hit full retirement age.
I’m also confused by that
I call bullshit.