How easy is it to become a professor?

Question

and when you become one, how long does it take to get a job?
Is it worth it? thanks you lol

Answer 1

It depends on how you plan your career.

First, what discipline will you teach? If you're in one of the traditional liberal arts (English, history, communication, psychology, sociology, music, theatre, visual arts, etc.) then you'll find that you're competing with 100 other applicants for every job--if you're in math or "hard" science you'll find the competition far less--if you are in mass media, engineering, medicine, you will be in great demand.

Another factor is: what sort of college will you profess in? If you've prepared properly, a community college career, a liberal-arts college career, or a university career might be easier--or if not prepared well, much harder.

It will take you about ten years total (at minimum) of college study to complete the Ph.D. or equivalent degree. After that, if you're prepared well, you'll get a job straightaway. If you're not prepared, you may bounce around doing part-time teaching for a decade or more before getting a tenure-track position.

To illustrate, my own experience. While working on my MA, I decided I wanted to teach in a community college. After completing coursework for my PhD (in communication), I spent a year teaching part-time and working on the dissertation and doing serious job-shopping. Since I had carefully chosen graduate courses that showed an interest in community college teaching, and since I had some impressive recommendations (including the president of the professional association) and the requisite experience and attitude, I got four interview and three offers before I accepted one and sent letters withdrawing my application from a dozen other schools.

If you're aiming for a community college, you need to go to conferences of your professional association, network with community college people, and consider some graduate course work (even as an audit) in community college education. Make sure your curriculum in grad. school labels you as a generalist (hard to do in most grad. programs).

If you aim for a small liberal arts college, do like you would for a community college, but network with the liberal-arts college crowd.

If a research university, you want to do your PhD with a specialist who is widely published in some narrow topic of interest to the discipline, and then continue to pursue research in that area until you earn tenure.

Generally, tenure is granted after six years of acceptable teaching, collegial relations in your department, and (at the research universities) manic research and publication. After tenure, you have the professorship for as long as you commit no felonies.

Answer 2

Not sure where you heard this or who said that - but it isn't easy becoming a professor. Irrespective of the stream chosen, it takes years of hard work, dedication, and sacrifice to become a professor. Not sure if anything has changed these days, but when I was getting my bachelor's one usually needed to have a PhD even to teach in two year colleges and they definitely needed a PhD to teach in four year colleges. It's very competitive these days. Between having to look for opportunities to become an adjunct professor and/or a tenured professor, the wait time one usually has to endure before earning tenure, etc . . . Doesn't seem easy at all. To be honest, getting a PhD in physics and then becoming a physics professor was my goal back in the day. I couldn't do it because of a couple reasons coupled with my interest which waned over the years. Even after all these years, I've still not forgotten the zeal I had when I was getting my bachelor's. Why do some people think it's easy? May be because they aren't aware of what one has to go through to become a professor, or it's possible someone they knew had high-enough connections to get in easily. Those are my guesses.

Answer 3

Not very easy. First, you generally need the highest possible degree in your field - that usually means a PhD. A PhD can take 10 years of college or more to obtain.

Then, if you're a scientist, you often have to do a 2-3 year postdoctoral position before applying to faculty jobs. Or sometimes even two postdocs.

Then you apply to faculty jobs. It's pretty competitive. There's a good chance you'll have to make a significant move to find a suitable job. And then you have to wait 5 years or more before you can start to apply for tenure.

Answer 4

My career goal is actually to become a professor so that I may conduct research and teach. I have spent a total of 7 years in school and still have approximately 3 more to go in order to get my doctorate. Throughout this entire process it has been essential for me to conduct research, present at conferences, and publish. The more you do these things, the greater your chances of finding a job when done with school.

Once one becomes a professor, it is dependent upon the type of University one teaches at that determines primarily what one does. For example, the larger institutions are primarily research institutions and whenever you sign a contract they give you a specified period of time (typically 3-5 years) in which you are required to do particular things to get tenure. These institutions are mostly concerned with research and require you to be very active publishing; therefore you are only required to teach a couple of classes.

The smaller institutions are usually teaching institutions and professors are still wanting to get tenure, but these institutions do not have the publication requirements of larger institutions. They are primarily concerned with teaching, and require professors to teach 3-4 classes a semester.

My primary goal in life is to conduct research and publish. Therefore, the numerous years of work and the financial debt that i've accumlated worth it to me because I highly value, not only my education, but the opportunity to get paid to do something I love--research.

P.S. Once a professor achieves tenure it is for all pragmatic purposes, impossible to fire them.