uni. prof, ask me anything

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There’s no way your salary is what you report it to be, even with an admin component.

Signed,
Social sciences prof who sees salary comparisons across all schools

(OP here): you see averages in those comparisons. I see the faculty in my purview and I'm not an anomaly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why do most faculty members treat professional staff members as “lesser than” and “the help”—especially when many staff members command higher salaries than faculty?

(OP here): Because a fair number of faculty members were trained very deeply in something few others fully grasp, and many (not all, but many) are deeply intellectual having had upbringings with little attention to other material or logistical pursuits, and often then can't pull their heads out to see how much others are also pursuing interests, doing good, struggling, and/or not recognizing that the faculty member is not the sole center of the world. Narcissism abounds! I also have incredibly empathetic, caring, and wonderful colleagues. They are fewer in number than the narcissists.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There’s no way your salary is what you report it to be, even with an admin component.

Signed,
Social sciences prof who sees salary comparisons across all schools

The UMD professors in social sciences (and not economists or anything hot) I know make about this. It’s public record. I don’t know any English professors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ugh I am also a prof (not humanities) but humanities profs at my institution start around 60K and don't get north of 100K unless they become chairs or directors or assistant deans. I'm not in a much better situation. Fine with me because spouse is a high earner and my tenure bar is pretty achievable, but amazing how much salaries vary between institutions and disciplines when we all have very similar jobs.

(OP here): I have friends from grad school in different aspects of my field who ended up at institutions teaching four or five classes per semester, and have been doing that for 20 years, and have not cracked six figures. And they're probably far more deserving of being at a top flight school. The randomness of the job market is startling. We are in a high dollar area, and spouse is a high earner, too. My highest sympathy is for my friends who met in grad school and the two salaries combined barely equate to mine. There's a huge disparity in pay among institutions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you heckle your children when they use improper grammar?

Prof kid here. Yes.

That's what I thought. Also a prof. kid.😅

(OP here): You both may appreciate the precision you gained, while also having some material for therapy. I did just correct my kid (5-8 year old) on the difference between good and well (but did so with a hug).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There’s no way your salary is what you report it to be, even with an admin component.

Signed,
Social sciences prof who sees salary comparisons across all schools

NP: I know two full profs (humanities) that also serve as chairs at my university that make $160 and $175. Our salaries are public.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Would you advice young people to aspire to be university professors...or is everyone an adjunct these days?

(OP here): The path is continually more treacherous, and there are ever fewer tenure line positions. My field's job postings, when I came out, would have a couple hundred postings, and half or more were tenure line. Now it's maybe 1/4 tenure line. It's depressing how the bottom has fallen out of academic teaching/research.

Advice should be “don’t do that”.

https://t.co/4DyJsmbcjJ

“Between 2019 and 2020 1,799 historians earned their Ph.D.s, and only 175 of them are now employed as full-time faculty members.”

Doubt other humanities disciplines are much better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Would you advice young people to aspire to be university professors...or is everyone an adjunct these days?

(OP here): The path is continually more treacherous, and there are ever fewer tenure line positions. My field's job postings, when I came out, would have a couple hundred postings, and half or more were tenure line. Now it's maybe 1/4 tenure line. It's depressing how the bottom has fallen out of academic teaching/research.

Advice should be “don’t do that”.

https://t.co/4DyJsmbcjJ

“Between 2019 and 2020 1,799 historians earned their Ph.D.s, and only 175 of them are now employed as full-time faculty members.”

Doubt other humanities disciplines are much better.

(OP here): yeah, I didn't finish the conclusion, but you did state it well, thank you. I recall in the mid-90's, and the head of our (large, top) phd program telling us at orientation about the Chronicle articles continually citing the great, coming retirement wave of boomer faculty, ready to collect their TIAA-CREF earnings, and opening a slew of jobs for us. We'd all have multiple offers. Up til that point our programs were filling up and producing so many faculty, but it was slowing down. The bottom fell out in that next decade. By the mid-2000s so many fewer tenure line jobs were opening. A lot of good, super-smart people were just destroyed in that process. All that investment (time, money, opportunity, hope) and no jobs for many of them. Or every year moving to teach 8 classes a year for 38k.

[Anonymous]

(1) Are you thinking of transforming any assignments in the wake of ChatGPT? Have you played around with it at all, and do you have any impressions of what it means for teaching in your (sub)field?

(2) You may have already answered this, but are you done grading for the semester? What’s looming? (Any R&Rs, dissertations, overdue reviews?)

(3) You are clearly well paid relative to other humanities faculty ($103K at an R1 right here). How did you get to that salary? Retention offers? Moves? Unionized? Some magical force counteracting salary compression?

[Anonymous]

I have a PhD in a hard science and decided to start my family and get an office job instead of go the post doc route. I need continual reminders of what a good decision that was because my heart hurts sometimes at the lost opportunity. So thanks OP

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:R1, humanities field, with strong undergrads programs (think Brown, Gtown, Tufts). Fire away.

My DD is autistic. She’s Level I, very gifted and quite social, but also very rigid and anxious. Until very recently, she wanted to major in STEM. There seem to be more people on the spectrum in STEM and we suspect she’ll have a less difficult time with accommodations and finding her tribe among hard science majors. However, she’s fallen in love with the humanities and social sciences recently. I worry that there’s less acceptance of autistic traits in those fields. Moreover, there’s a lot of figurative language and academic double speak in the humanities that I think she might not grasp. What do you think?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a PhD in a hard science and decided to start my family and get an office job instead of go the post doc route. I need continual reminders of what a good decision that was because my heart hurts sometimes at the lost opportunity. So thanks OP

(OP here): Some of the success stories I know were people who bailed out and ended up as consultants (financial/venture capital) or jettisoned to law school and clear-eyed were happy to do the crap to make partner (once you see the abyss of high capacity poverty, the vacuous nature of a law firm practice seems almost comforting). Good decision

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Would you advice young people to aspire to be university professors...or is everyone an adjunct these days?

(OP here): The path is continually more treacherous, and there are ever fewer tenure line positions. My field's job postings, when I came out, would have a couple hundred postings, and half or more were tenure line. Now it's maybe 1/4 tenure line. It's depressing how the bottom has fallen out of academic teaching/research.

Why is the bottom falling in every profession I read about?
Everyone seems to work much more than a decade ago to make the same money.
Tech and finance might be the exception.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:R1, humanities field, with strong undergrads programs (think Brown, Gtown, Tufts). Fire away.

My DD is autistic. She’s Level I, very gifted and quite social, but also very rigid and anxious. Until very recently, she wanted to major in STEM. There seem to be more people on the spectrum in STEM and we suspect she’ll have a less difficult time with accommodations and finding her tribe among hard science majors. However, she’s fallen in love with the humanities and social sciences recently. I worry that there’s less acceptance of autistic traits in those fields. Moreover, there’s a lot of figurative language and academic double speak in the humanities that I think she might not grasp. What do you think?

(OP here): I really don't have enough grasp of autism and how it impacts cognitive and analytical abilities (and assume it's very person-variable), so I can't really speak to this. That said, I end up with a lot of STEM students who want to explore more than just the hard sciences, and many report it helps them love all inquiry more, including in their chosen (science) major. "Acceptance" and accommodations are really dependent on the faculty member--I have humanities colleagues who are terribly hard-nosed ("your grandma died at the hands of your mother last night, in front of you, but you turned the paper in late? Tough. It's late and you fail.") Again, the culture of accommodation is more local to the prof, maybe the school type will lend itself to some leniency.

My one suggestion: encourage her to explore. Don't pressure too much. See how she does in a class or two. A humanities class that lights her imagination and mind on fire may very well carry over into embracing all the other work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Would you advice young people to aspire to be university professors...or is everyone an adjunct these days?

(OP here): The path is continually more treacherous, and there are ever fewer tenure line positions. My field's job postings, when I came out, would have a couple hundred postings, and half or more were tenure line. Now it's maybe 1/4 tenure line. It's depressing how the bottom has fallen out of academic teaching/research.

Why is the bottom falling in every profession I read about?
Everyone seems to work much more than a decade ago to make the same money.
Tech and finance might be the exception.

(OP here): I'm a humanities prof. My answer to this would involve the pathology of the will and bankrupt social and political orders. Few would find those answers helpful or illuminating. Ask an economist?