College Professors: Salary, Working Conditions & Hours

[mynameinc]

I would like details (e.g. salary, working conditions, hours) about being a college professor. I've often contemplated it. By the way, I know all of those vary from college to college, but please try to give an average.

 

[jtbell]

It's impossible to give a meaningful answer unless you narrow the boundaries of your question. It varies incredibly widely depending on the category of school, its balance between research and teaching, the department or field, years of experience, etc.

Guessing as to the ranges, you're talking about $40K to $200K per year, zero to 20 hours per week in the classroom (plus associated time in preparation and grading), zero to 60 hours per week in the lab (or supervising a lab or pursuing grant applications).

 

[mynameinc]

It's impossible to give a meaningful answer unless you narrow the boundaries of your question. It varies incredibly widely depending on the category of school, its balance between research and teaching, the department or field, years of experience, etc.

Guessing as to the ranges, you're talking about $40K to $200K per year, zero to 20 hours per week in the classroom (plus associated time in preparation and grading), zero to 60 hours per week in the lab (or supervising a lab or pursuing grant applications).

Ah. I'll think about that.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Keep in mind those are correlated. There aren't many jobs that are 0 hours in the classroom and 0 hours in the lab and pay $200k.

 

[twofish-quant]

It's very much field dependent.

The other thing that you have to be aware of is that jobs are *EXTREMELY* scarce. Physics professorships are rare enough so that you should go into graduate school assuming that you won't get one, and if you aren't at that level, then you should think of becoming a physics professor as something like wanting to be a rock star or major league basketball player.