Assistant Professor

[Anonymous]

What is the reality of being an assistant / associate professor at a University? I see a lot of various postings. All I remember in college is meeting once a week for lecture and group activities. Is it cutthroat? It is good for an extroverted introvert?

[Anonymous]

What field?

[Anonymous]

What's your question? Are you wondering whether to suggest that path for yourself, or someone else?

Being a professor is a lot more than 1 hour of lecture a week, especially at a R1 university.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What field?

Liberal Arts, Education

[Anonymous]

It can be cutthroat.

You may spend time seeking funding for projects and writing grant proposals.

You’ll have to present at conferences, research, produce writing or other work, attend committee meetings that can be slow moving and frustrating, work on assessments during summer months, grade papers, deal with mentally ill students who may yell or curse at you, etc.

It’s not just teaching for an hour. Lol

[Anonymous]

Extremely hard to get a tenure track job and becomes less likely every year; there is a glut of people who want to do this and not enough positions, most especially in the humanities. A great majority of people who teach are adjuncts. They make considerably less money and do not get benefits; it’s a good part time gig for someone who is supplementing a spouse’s income or doesn’t need the money. They teach all the basic classes and never know if they are going to get classes until the last minute. There are a few places where this situation is better, but not many. A best case scenario for most is a full time lecturer position with benefits, which is the step below associate/above adjunct. Academic hiring is a whole world to understand beyond this, regarding hiring outside candidates, publication, and much more.

[Anonymous]

You aren't a PhD student, are you? It is 24/7 work almost year round but it does change depending on time of year. So summer is research and grant proposals, pub writing and submission--the latter is more yesr round along with conference submissions. Then you have syllabus prep and teaching/grading and advising and holding office hours. Then there is university committee and department work. So you might do admissions for undergraduate or graduate students, or Math curriculum alignment plus prepping for accreditation if you are having accreditators visit or any state licensing boards if you are in say education.

This doesn't include the politics and even if you can find a job. You may end up only finding one at a no name school in the middle of nowhere. And you could be paid the nice sum of 60k a year for this. Sometimes, if you get tenure, you can negotiate 6 figures if you go some place else as an Associate. I suggest looking at salaries at state schools.

[Anonymous]

Big difference between assistant and associate. Latter has tenure.

[Anonymous]

The way you posed this question tells me it would not be right for you.

[Anonymous]

Tenure track or adjunct? Adjuncts make pennies and have no benefits. Tenure track is awful, back-stabbing crazy hours.

[Anonymous]

Best way to get tenure is to bring in grant $$$.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It can be cutthroat.

You may spend time seeking funding for projects and writing grant proposals.

You’ll have to present at conferences, research, produce writing or other work, attend committee meetings that can be slow moving and frustrating, work on assessments during summer months, grade papers, deal with mentally ill students who may yell or curse at you, etc.

It’s not just teaching for an hour. Lol

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You aren't a PhD student, are you? It is 24/7 work almost year round but it does change depending on time of year. So summer is research and grant proposals, pub writing and submission--the latter is more yesr round along with conference submissions. Then you have syllabus prep and teaching/grading and advising and holding office hours. Then there is university committee and department work. So you might do admissions for undergraduate or graduate students, or Math curriculum alignment plus prepping for accreditation if you are having accreditators visit or any state licensing boards if you are in say education.

This doesn't include the politics and even if you can find a job. You may end up only finding one at a no name school in the middle of nowhere. And you could be paid the nice sum of 60k a year for this. Sometimes, if you get tenure, you can negotiate 6 figures if you go some place else as an Associate. I suggest looking at salaries at state schools.

+1 to this. In my field the schedule isn’t the same, but overall this rings true. You’ll be pulled in different directions: better spend a lot of time preparing for and handling your class or classes, since teaching is part of what you have to do well to get tenure. You’ll have to spend time mentoring your grad student(s) and postdoc(s) since they do the grunt work for your research, and don’t forget to take on undergrad interns who consume more of your effort than they produce in results but are a necessary part of your leadership role. You’ll have to spend time writing grant proposals, sitting on review panels, and overseeing the spending on the grants — and if you don’t bring in enough money, that’ll affect your tenure decision. And of course there’s publishing and conference presentations to get your name out there and build that tenure package. You’ll have to spend time doing department and school work too. It’s a grind and you’ll be making under $25 an hour equivalent. People often point out how underpaid and overworked high school teachers are, but pre-tenure professors probably have it worse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is the reality of being an assistant / associate professor at a University? I see a lot of various postings. All I remember in college is meeting once a week for lecture and group activities. Is it cutthroat? It is good for an extroverted introvert?

If you have to ask this question on DC, you are not ever in a million years landing a TT position at any western university.

[Anonymous]

I would not recommend that anyone plan on going into academia now -- certainly not in the humanities.

The short answer to your question is that an assistant professor and an associate professor are on different rungs of the tenure-track hierarchy. When you start, you are an assistant professor -- they are basically trying you out. If you survive that gauntlet, they will make you an associate professor, which means you are on your way to making tenure if you don't mess up. Hopefully you don't mess up and you get tenure and become a full professor.

How you climb these rungs has very little to do with teaching ability (although you are observed, so that is taken into account -- you can't be terrible), and everything to do with publishing/conferences/contributing to your field. You can also make yourself valuable by taking on a lot of admin grunt work as well (the big awful job at my school was reading applications/writing samples of people applying to the grad program); less awful was serving as an advisor, serving as thesis advisors for grad students (this involves a lot of reading in my field), and serving on various committees that do nothing of any value (very annoying). Much of this is mandatory, but you can endear yourself by taking on more than your fair share.

The main reason I wouldn't recommend looking at trying to become a professor is that you probably won't be able to get a tenure-track job at all; most teaching is done by adjuncts now, and the pay is terrible. I taught English Comp for NOVA and when I did the math including not only in-classroom-teaching time, but prep time, admin time, and paper grading -- I made less than min wage. You aren't paid hourly, you are paid a set fee per class that you teach. Adjunct jobs can be few and far between at universities, because they use their current grad students to teach the entry level classes. When adjunct jobs do become available at such places, there is a huge amount of competition for them, and again, the pay is abysmal. I don't know anyone who is able to live solely from adjunct pay--you need a second gig if you want to eat, and even then you probably need 4 roommates in order to afford rent, at least in this area.

My peers from grad school who have secured full time work at universities are not teaching -- one works in admissions, one works in communications (I think they write the brochures and stuff like that), and one is the grad coordinator for a program that isn't even our field. I do know one person who did secure a tenure-track teaching position, but they published two well-received books and they are teaching undergrads at a low-prestige college in a bad location. I have another friend -- who is brilliant and has published multiple critically acclaimed books -- and they couldn't find a teaching job at all (they gave up trying and started their own catering company which is doing well).

It's just not a viable career option any more. Careers in STEM are a little different, but you mentioned humanities and that's my expertise. So. Yeah. Not a good idea at all to plan on being a professor as a career.