#14487: — 01/27  at  09:41 AM
First thing: are college professors as badly paid as school teachers? I read a while ago that a full professor in the US made a hundred sixty grand a year on average, so I presume that they don't exactly pay you minimum wage.

Second thing: I don't know about biology, but in history you don't have to memorize useless dates once you get to college. The same goes for every other humanities department. Mathematics becomes about proofs more than tedious calculations at the beginning of the second year of university around here.

Third thing: Calvin or not, I bet your students don't send "zzz..." SMSs to their parents every lecture the way I do.

#14491: PZ Myers — 01/27  at  09:55 AM
160K? Wow. No, something is really, really wrong with your source. Starting salaries are around 40K, and they climb up fairly slowly...or if your educational system is in a financial crisis and they freeze wages, they don't climb at all. I considered going into the public school system several years ago when I discovered that high school teachers in my district were getting paid significantly more than I was.

We don't make students memorize dates, but they do need to know all those wacky terms for different stages of meiosis, for instance.

#14492: — 01/27  at  09:57 AM
Unfortunately, K-12 Social Studies/History isnt far from Calvin's cynical perception. The state I grew up in taught essentially the same US History in the 5th, 8th and 11th grades. The type of higher order learning expected and sometimes achieved in college is rare in high school. 'Tis a frustrating system for teachers and students alike.

As far as college professors, their pay varies widely. Average institutions pay many of them below $50k per year unless they are in a high demand discipline (Engineering, Computing, Business) which has non academic competition. Public institutions have this data online, although it usually requires a little searching. I was talking to our Chemistry people yesterday and was told they are seeking 2 profs to replace 4 and all the applicants are near retirement. Where are the young Chemistry researchers? Places like Med school, Pharmaceuticals, etc. where the money is.

#14496: — 01/27  at  10:24 AM
We don’t make students memorize dates, but they do need to know all those wacky terms for different stages of meiosis, for instance.

Okay, then... if only I knew the meaning of the word meiosis - as you see, biology isn't my major.

Starting salaries are around 40K, and they climb up fairly slowly…or if your educational system is in a financial crisis and they freeze wages, they don’t climb at all.

That's 40K for a 27-year-old Assistant Professor who got his Ph.D. six months before, right?

#14497: PZ Myers — 01/27  at  10:44 AM
No, $40K+ for an assistant professor, period. It varies with the discipline, but in biology we usually expect an entry level person to have a postdoc or two under their belts. I had two. I was in my mid- to late-thirties before I got paid that much. At least post-doc salary scales climb fairly quickly, I was paid $15K/year as a first-year post-doc in the late 80s, which went up to about $30K before I got an official academic position.

As DD mentions, it varies with the institution and the discipline. Computer science professors make significantly more, because if we didn't pay them that much, they'd be easily sucked back into industry.

I've known a few full professors who were knocking back $100K/year. The only ones I've known to make more were more administrators than educators/researchers.

A while back, I was very surprised to learn that the highest paid employee of my university was some guy in the physical plant -- a union member who'd been here since the ice age.

#14499: — 01/27  at  10:54 AM
Alon, Examples from the inland Northwest. The WSU numbers are the best in my region.

http://www.ofm.wa.gov/persdetail/365.txt

http://www.webs.uidaho.edu/ipb/BudgetBooksFY04/salaryrec04.pdf

#14500: PZ Myers — 01/27  at  11:04 AM
Ha ha. Look at those foolish people. What kind of idiot would spend 10-15 years in training for a chance to get a job that pays that little?

Oh. Well. Hmm. I just remembered that I...never mind.

#14501: — 01/27  at  11:10 AM
I might add that that disciple variability does not come into play in public K-12 schools. Their salaries are tightly controlled by years of service, plus education. So a 10 year History teacher with one MA gets paid the same as a 10 year science or math teacher with one MA/MS. The result being that they have a very hard time getting good science and math teachers.

Another wrinkle I recently learned is that at some instititutions when one is studying to be a teacher the discipline classes are graded, and the education classes are not graded. So if you do a lot of hard work in Math or Science for half your credits, and read a few books and b.s. a lot for the other half, but get no grade for the easier half, it is tougher to maintain a high GPA which you may want to get into grad school. Talk about a disincentive to become a math teacher.

#14502: — 01/27  at  11:17 AM
And we know why some Faculty tend to hate IT people. Imagine getting paid more, with less experience, and NO Ph.D. required. Good thing we have those lifetime Physical Plant people around to draw some of the fire.

#14504: PZ Myers — 01/27  at  11:26 AM
I don't hate them, I don't even resent them. I think putting in 50 years of service to an institution warrants some significant reward.

Of course, I do pity them. They don't get to do biology.

#14506: — 01/27  at  11:39 AM
Not that I'm complaining, but to reiterate an old joke:

"The wages of sin are death, the wages in science* are worse"

* feel free to insert institution/job/discipline here

I have to say PZ makes a great point. We might not get lots of cash in science, especially in academe, but we do get to do research, which in my case involves playing with a very expensive chemistry set (and associated devices) and getting paid for it. Why the hell would anyone wnat to do anything else?

<Mr T voice>

I pity the fool....

</Mr T voice>

#14508: hedwig_the_owl — 01/27  at  11:52 AM
(closes eyes)

I thought that after all my hard work, I was going to eventually earn enough money so I could buy a NEW pair of jeans instead of used and now you tell me I'm not ... ??

*cry*

#14510: PaulH — 01/27  at  11:58 AM
If you're studying something like history at a higher level, it's true that you're not made to memorize endless tedious dates. No, you're just expected to know them.

PZ, did you see that some publisher is coming out with The Complete Calvin and Hobbes? (oh please let them spell it compleat!)

#14513: jhallum — 01/27  at  12:27 PM
I'm a computer support person for a science department. I've never looked, but I understand from talking to the various people, that I make as much or more as the computer guy than about a third to half of the faculty (outside of any research dollars they pay themselves when they are not teaching). And I, as the computer guy, make 3/4's of what a sysadmin in the 'real world' makes. Faculty don't get paid a lot, unless they have the title Professor, Department Chair, Assistant Dean, or Dean after their name.

#14515: — 01/27  at  12:41 PM
Ugh... though it's better knowing now than when I look for work and ask, "Wait a minute, don't assistant profs get paid like seventy-five grand a year?"
"Nope, the average's forty, why?"

About consulting gigs, what can there be in biology anyway? In economics I understand. In law you can make more from taking a big-money case every five years than from teaching. But corporations don't typically seek biology professors' advice about financial matters, do they?

About the tenure part, you don't automatically get tenure... at least that's what I've been told, but I've also been told that American full professors make $160,000 per year.

In history you're expected to know the dates, so nobody examines you on them. You don't lose points for writing, "The North Koreans invaded South Korea because..." rather than "The North Koreans invaded South Korea on 25/6/1950 because..." (and I had to look that up even though I A-minused a class on military history whose first third dealt with that war).

#14517: mattH — 01/27  at  01:02 PM
Alon Levy:

About the tenure part, you don’t automatically get tenure… at least that’s what I’ve been told, but I’ve also been told that American full professors make $160,000 per year.

Perhaps at a first-tier, private University like Yale or Stanford, but at public universities it's much lower, especially at the second- or third-tier universities. It's even worse for academic couples that try to stay together. Besides finding it difficult to work at the same institution, if they do it's likely that one of them could make much more by going elsewhere.

#14521: Rob Loftis — 01/27  at  01:49 PM
PZ said:
>A while back, I was very surprised to learn that the
>highest paid employee of my university was some guy in the
>physical plant — a union member who’d been here since the
>ice age.

Good for him! Would that all maintainance guys be so well paid.

Bob said
>There are 1000 struggling, broke, stressed, smart,
>disheveled, grad students who would practically kill to
>get a tenured job, like yours.

Yes. In fact, I'd like PZ's job, but...

>The pay may not be high — but what about the perks? the
>time off? the academic boondogles? the consulting gigs?
>the prestige?

Wait amminit.

Consulting gigs? Only in business and engineering, which aren't the disciplines people think about when they are hating on academics.

Academic boondogles? A few, but far less than in the business world. My dad goes to Hawaii for his conferences, I go to Toledo for mine. I did get to go to China last year, but that sort of thing is less common in academe than you would think.

Time off? Most use it for research. I bet there is no more deadwood at a university than there is in any organization of its size. I bet Boeing has more deadwood than Harvard.

Presige? ok, there you're right. Nothing says sexy like a middle aged college professor at a midwestern university.

Ok, maybe i'm just feeding a troll here, but these things need to be said.

#14524: PZ Myers — 01/27  at  02:01 PM

Nothing says sexy like a middle aged college professor at a midwestern university.

If you're being sarcastic, don't tell me.

#14525: — 01/27  at  02:40 PM
this seems like a pretty good bunch of students so far. If only there weren’t quite so many of them…

Have you read "Straight Man" by Richard Russo? It's a very funny novel (the author is a Pulitzer Prize winner, though not for this book) - all about academic politics during budget cutbacks at a small public university. Anyway, one of the characters always chose to teach at 8 AM and gave really boring lectures for the first two weeks of each semester, just to get his class size down to a more manageable level.

#14530: — 01/27  at  03:31 PM
Yeah, it's a sin what we pay teachers at all levels. When I wrote speeches on education policy, I had a clip of a janitor at an elementary school, a guy the kids loved. He stayed after school sometimes to help the kids who needed academic help, and he had a flair for it. The teachers and principal encouraged him to go to college and be a teacher. Six years of night school and the occasional day class, he graduated, got certified, and got a job teaching at the same elementary school -- at $10,000 a year less than he made as a janitor.

Here in Texas, with a Ph.D. an public school teacher can start at about $35,000. I'm in my second year -- and my wife makes more money in word processing at a Dallas law firm.

Heck, she makes more money doing that than I did in my first years of law practice, too.

#14532: — 01/27  at  04:14 PM
Oh yes, the prestige is the thing; the sheer kudos and stratospheric sex appeal.

It applies to other disciplines, too, I hear (see, e.g. http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000171.html).

#14536: Rob Loftis — 01/27  at  05:03 PM
ok, this is the sort of thing I encounter all the time, and I'm never sure how to read it. All the time I see posts that boil down to

"Fuck you "

or

"No really, you are a complete douchbag. "

or

"I'm going to eat your children. (giggles)"

How should I respond?

#14537: PZ Myers — 01/27  at  05:14 PM
I know exactly how to respond to it. My view of this site has a little button on it that lets me delete obnoxious comments, and Mr Flynn has long worn out his welcome. I click it.

#14545: Tyson Burghardt — 01/27  at  06:34 PM
Having seen a good assistant prof in the English department at my undergrad spend all her off-days traveling to find a better job at an English department not slowly collapsing, I find the allocation of resources to teachers and researchers rather appallingly criminal.

Unfortunately, those in charge take on new docs like they take on medical residents: as cheap sources of foul labor. In the medical profession, they oftentimes justify paying the equivalent of $7.00 an hour to overworked residents as "paying their dues." A strange requirement, given the average debt of a newly-graduated doc is ~$100k.

#14565: — 01/27  at  11:13 PM
Well, with meds there's at least the solace that the starting pay for a doctor in the US is a hundred thousand per year - or so a good friend who went to NYU medical says. With Ph.D.s, well, apparently not.

I know exactly how to respond to it. My view of this site has a little button on it that lets me delete obnoxious comments, and Mr Flynn has long worn out his welcome. I click it.

I don't think he's serious. I think he's just mocking conservatives, like Bob Boudelang on Democratic Underground. I find him less obnoixous than I do Robert O'Brien, and even with him I think you were wrong to exile him.

At least you don't ban people for calling something you say a rant...