During my career as a not-so-traditional academic, I've also followed a part-time career path that few younger faculty members nowadays consider -- the military.
First, the academic path. I know what it's like to move and start over again on the tenure track. I'm in my third such position now. I accepted my first tenure-track position as an assistant professor in 1989 at an annual salary of $25,000. It was a reasonable amount, given that I was just starting out, still A.B.D. in applied linguistics, and working in a community with a low cost of living.
Once I had my Ph.D. in hand, however, I left that campus for another that offered a higher salary in return for a higher teaching load. There I earned tenure and the rank of associate professor. I served a year as an acting associate dean of arts and sciences, and earned close to a six-figure income during each of the last three years I was there.
Sound good? It was. But I taught almost continuously, year-round -- a combination of between 16 and 21 three-credit courses in writing, literature, and linguistics. During that time, I also published some literary criticism and reference articles as well as poetry -- nothing that made me a household name and nothing that made larger institutions want to offer me tenure upfront. But I was doing something besides just paying the bills.
The only real problem with my second university position was its location -- too far away from aging parents and other family members. After six years, I gave up my tenured associate status to relocate my family of four children closer to my northern Minnesota homeland and to start academic life anew. I became an assistant professor of English for yet a third time.
Despite the cost of the move (on my dime this time) and a drastically reduced salary, I have no regrets about taking my new academic job in northeastern South Dakota. My new position is tailor-made for my academic background and interests, and my social life and nonacademic interests mirror those of the rural farm settings where I grew up. I am home. Or close enough, anyway.
Flash back to grad school and my military side career. As I prepared to enter my Ph.D. program, I felt drawn to the military career I'd left behind. Dusting off the officer's commission I'd earned some 10 years earlier, I returned to the U.S. Air Force, this time as a reservist and relatively young captain. I didn't go so far as to dust off my wings and resume my active-duty flying career. Instead, I became a part-time admissions counselor for one of the most selective undergraduate institutions in the country, the U.S. Air Force Academy.
My new Reserve position seemed a good fit. Moreover, unlike the traditional Reserve job, it required no monthly drill, no annual training, and no overnight duty away from home and family. It also offered no regular paydays -- just credit toward a Reserve retirement pension that will not begin until I'm 60, now a mere nine years away.
One huge advantage of my Reserve job was its flexible schedule. I could do most of my Reserve duty either from home or in between the many and varied academic duties of a grad student and, later, of an English professor.
As I continued to moonlight as an admissions officer, I found promotions as well as increased responsibilities. I made it to major, then lieutenant colonel. I became a deputy admissions director and then, in 1996, an area director. (Directors continue to serve as admissions officers while also managing the counselors within their areas.) I was fortunate when I moved to South Dakota in 1999 that the Reserve needed a director there; I simply transferred my director's job from my old area to the new one.
Then in 2001 I was promoted to the rank of colonel. At that point, I decided to become a traditional reservist as well and found a Reserve job at the Pentagon, at the nexus of the Air Force command structure -- in the Air and Space Operations, where I've served active-duty tours during the summers of 2001 and 2002. I also continue to serve as the South Dakota admissions officer for the academy.
On September 11, 2001, I had been back on my quiet campus for less than two weeks when I was reminded that small state universities don't have the same target value as my office in that five-sided bull's-eye known as the Pentagon. This past summer, as I sat at my desk in the Pentagon, drafting this piece after normal duty hours had ended, I considered the relative safety of my perch on the fourth floor here versus that of my quiet college campus office.
It didn't seem all that dangerous here, at the U.S. military's version of ground zero. Sure, my active-duty compatriots and I all know the ultimate price we might pay for wearing a military uniform, but few seem to give it much thought. The work pace -- or the "ops tempo," as it's called here -- keeps most people too busy to worry. Of course, maintaining morale is more complicated than just keeping the troops preoccupied, but work pace does play a role.
While I've truly enjoyed my past Air Force experiences, it wasn't the lure of an exciting lifestyle or any huge helpings of patriotism that drew me back into a more active military role. And it certainly wasn't the pervasively conservative political leanings of my comrades-in-arms. Rather, it was the opportunity to pay more bills than I could as an academic and to boost my Reserve pension entitlements in the process. That must be at heart a mercenary impulse; after all, how many junior professors have the opportunity to earn more for three months' work in the summer than they earn during the entire academic year?
Admittedly, my Reserve salary is boosted by the fact that I am just one step away from brigadier-general status. But even young officers with only six years of military service make more than most mid-career tenured associate professors. The basic minimum salary and paid allowances for a captain with six years of service currently total $57,659.64 a year. That figure does not include tax breaks on allowances (which are not taxed at all), incentive pay (in some career fields), cost-of-living allowances in high-cost areas, free medical and dental care, and 30 days' paid vacation each year. Active-duty soldiers with my rank and service time are paid in excess of $100,000 a year.
I don't consider myself a particularly greedy mercenary. Neither my spouse nor I were born to wealth. I'm neither a spendthrift nor a miser. I have the usual bills associated with raising four children, all born while I was a full-time student, and my spouse has worked for only three years of our 20-year marriage. So I feel obligated to work as much as I can. A traditional assistant professor's salary in the low $30s, with no other source of family income, would make our economic survival dicey.
The sharp contrast between academic pay and pay in the business or government sectors has not been lost on my spouse, who grows increasingly agitated that I should cling so stubbornly to my beloved academic career instead of opting for a full-time military, government, or business career. She's more than once considered moving to pursue her own career interests in a more cosmopolitan job market, a move that would separate our family in the process and add far more to the stress of making ends meet than mere financial pangs ever could.
Academic life is great, but low faculty salaries give pause -- or should -- to anyone contemplating starting over on the tenure track. They may also give pause to the aspiring young academic who is not independently wealthy, who hopes to raise a family, and whose spouse either does not work or does not have easily transferable job skills.
So do our universities suffer by financially discouraging large segments of society from becoming career academics? What about the glut of bright young Ph.D.'s already on the market, competing in droves for each elusive tenure-track job? It's common knowledge that universities already can pick and choose whom to hire, whom to tenure, and how little to pay them. But how can universities possibly attract the best and brightest professors from all levels of American society when salaries, especially starting ones, are so abysmal?
I love my academic career, but unlike most academics, I have a backup military career and pension awaiting me. Maybe I'll move again before I retire. Maybe I'll abandon teaching to resurrect that small family sawmill back home in Minnesota. Certainly the financial incentives to stay in academe are minimal.
