Do college professors make decent money?

Question

Obviously high school and lower-level teachers are severely underpaid. What about college professors (even at a community college level)?

Answer 1

"decent" depends heavily on a professor's employer's funding mechanism and their personal actions and accomplishments.

Many colleges are financially strapped. Low tuitions, low state appropriations, and/or other issues restrict the funds available to pay faculty.

After you've gotten a terminal degree [Ph.D. or similar in most cases], you'll have four years of undergraduate college and three to seven years of grad school invested in your education. The student loans involved can be staggering and the payments quite high.

Those professors who have significant expertise to sell as consultants to outside parties can do quite well IF they can juggle their schedules to create the time needed to serve their clients. Be warned that some colleges deny such opportunities to their faculty, or partly deny them.

As is true in most fields, only the best working for the affluent have much chance of becoming more than middle class or upper middle class.

If you love it, you'll manage the finances ok. Since you ask, I suspect you don't love the idea and are going fishing for a high paying career. Professor isn't likely it for you. Try lawyer -- same three years of grad school and much better income prospects [unless you're like Hilliary and don't get a private enterprise job after graduation].

:-)

Answer 2

It depends on if they are tenured, tenure-track, or working as an adjunct. It depends if they are a full professor, or a lecturer, etc. It also depends on their field, how known they are for their work, and the particular college/region they are working in.

Some college professors do quite well for themselves. Others do not. The liberal arts is an especially difficult field to even find a teaching job in, and a lot of highly qualified and educated people work as adjuncts, getting paid by the class. Professors in in-demand fields, such as business, engineering, nursing, and computer science, tend to get paid better than professors in some of the liberal arts, because it's harder to find qualified applicants (PhDs in these fields are fewer in the first place, and many of them get snapped up by corporations.)

College professors at a community college level, if they are full time staff, can do okay. They don't usually make as much as a person with a comparable education and experience level would in business, but their benefits are often better.

Answer 3

I don't know, K-12 teachers get a lot of time off each year and a great retirement pension, so I think they do fine. Professor salaries vary widely -- a full prof can make over 200K a year at a prestigious university, plus additional income from panel/speaking opps and outside publishing. an associate prof averages 70K a year plus good job security. adjuncts average 45-50K, they are definitely underpaid and can be discarded at will. but there is a glut of new PhDs out there and that's the market, so many of them are moving into private industry where they triple their salaries.