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[bookishone]

Negotiate higher salaries based on CoL in the area.  Or move to our state uni.....

HA-HA-HA-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!
Boy, inthelab, that was a good one!

Let's see: 1) Humanities field. 2) Starving State University, with furloughs and layoffs among the possible "solutions". 3) State Budget in the tank, no foreseeable upswing for a few years at least, and state political climate decidedly anti-intellectual. 4) Number of jobs advertised in my field this year: fewer than ten. And that's speaking broadly.

In addition, although our salaries are regularly way below the national average, we have no regular COLAs or merit pay. Some years you get lucky; most years, not so much. You'd better hope your book comes out in a year (unlike mine) when there is state money for merit pay or you're out of luck.

In this climate, though, I don't think you can even publish your way out to a better job, because there aren't very many of those better jobs out there any more. See NYTimes article today on UC Berkeley. Really sad.

[jonesey]

Let's see: 1) Humanities field. 2) Starving State University, with furloughs and layoffs among the possible "solutions". 3) State Budget in the tank, no foreseeable upswing for a few years at least, and state political climate decidedly anti-intellectual. 4) Number of jobs advertised in my field this year: fewer than ten. And that's speaking broadly.

In addition, although our salaries are regularly way below the national average, we have no regular COLAs or merit pay. Some years you get lucky; most years, not so much. You'd better hope your book comes out in a year (unlike mine) when there is state money for merit pay or you're out of luck.

Wow, are you in Florida, too?  : )

[tee_bee]

The nine month salary assumes we're not teaching over the summer (regardless of whatever academic work we are engaged in). Most schools pay a set rate for summer teaching. Also, most schools allow faculty to elect to have their salary extended into a full twelve-month pay schedule. So even if they're not teaching over the summer, they're still receiving their salary from the previous nine months. 

This has some implications:

1. If, as ucprof noted upthread, you can get research grants, you can often get summer salary for two or three months, depending on the funder.

2. Summer teaching is often paid separately, of course

3. Some administrative or other tasks that require summer work will pay summer salary.

4. To compare our earnings to those in other professions, it's important to take the 9 month salary and add 33%. Thus, someone making $40k is theoretically earning at the same rate as someone making a bit over $53k. Of course, theoretical money <> real money. This "summer off" time gives one some freedom.

5. In even the social sciences, it's possible to pick up income from reviewing grants, book royalties, etc. None of this is huge, of course, but it can help. I can say that I've never reported on my 1040 only my 9 month base salary, because of the little bits of 1099 income  that come in here and there.

6. A bit of a gripe. I know full profs (full disclosure--I'm full now) who just won't do anything over the summer under the theory that they aren't compensated for summer time. I call bu11$hit on this. The median faculty member in the United States usually earns more than the median wage in the United States, While this is probably untrue in Seattle, Berkeley, LA, NYC, etc., the broader point is that many of us on 9 month contracts still earn more than our neighbors. What we get for those three months is, as noted, freedom--and not just then, of course. So people who don't work during the summer on basic stuff like--especially--PhD advisement are unprofessional and should find other things to do. Well over 90% of my colleagues don't behave like this, but the 10% that do make life really annoying for the rest of us.

7. I know that YMMV, that the humanities don't pay, and that many university systems pay shockingly low salaries, so I'm not arguing that everything is totally great. In my particular social science field, however, I can say that salaries--and, more to the point, income--start low, but ramp up quickly for the first ten years--and then, of course, comes the plateau.

Although if I had a dime for everyone who asked me what I was going to do with my "summer off," I'd distribute the wealth to all y'all, and we'd be rich, the end.

[greyscale]

I found Stanford's information online, showing the 33rd and 66th percentiles and broken down by schools and rank.
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/may20/faculty-salary-052009.html
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/may20/files/faculty_salary_2009.pdf

I imagine that's about as high as it gets.

[neutralname]

TB wrote:

A bit of a gripe. I know full profs (full disclosure--I'm full now) who just won't do anything over the summer under the theory that they aren't compensated for summer time.

We had a guy who had this attitude--he wasn't tenured but he was dept chair.  The secretary told me about it -- students with questions about the department, adjuncts with questions, staffing to be sorted out.  The prof told the secretary not to bother him in the summers.  He left before he came up for tenure, because he wasn't popular with anyone. 

[dr_zack]

I agree with you  . . . but can't feel THAT sorry for someone who isn't capable of looking out for their own interests, especially people trained to do RESEARCH like a grad student.  If you have crappy mentors there are always lots of books on this subject that can dispense this advice, or even websites.  *WINK*

Also factoring in is the fact that a lot of new PhDs are going into their first salaried job (there is another thread about this). This usually means that 1)they don't know how to negotiate, and many still think of themselves as grad students, so they are intimidated by the power differential when negotiating with deans or chairs and 2)they've been living at or near the poverty level and/or with loans for quite a few years; 30K sounds like a good deal to some of them.

While that latter example may be extreme--I hope--I know friends who have taken the first amount offered by a chair or dean, and have been intimidated to ask for more. Then they start their jobs and realize that other faculty who did know how to negotiate are making a lot more and sometimes teaching less. I think grad schools are getting better about preparing faculty for this. I also think some universities take advantage of this inexperience  of new hires. And with the economic crisis combined with the glut of PhDs in many fields, room for negotiation has become narrower.

I would submit this is one reason that has kept professor salaries low for a long time.

[dr_zack]

Me neither - considering the caliber of school that Penn is! 

And, $160,000 a year is more than "reasonable" not only in academia but as a salary in general.  You'd be in the upper percentile of wage earners (which goes to show how screwed up things are).

Some prfessors in fact make reasonable money. The website says that a Penn full professor earns $160 (on average?).

But I wouldn't consider a full prof. at Penn to be average.

[dr_zack]

If you mean "reasonable" as in "deserved", then I'd agree.  If you mean "reasonable" as in you think that is a normal salary or that you require this kind of dough to "be happy" than THAT is scary to me.  Also, I;d not work like a slave in some Fortune 500 company -- and deal with all that that entails even for $400,000.  My freedom and flexibility are priceless.

I said some professors make reasonable money. The "on average" refers to mean salary within Penn full professors.

Seriously, the money is an issue that sometimes bothers me, especially I learned recently that a friend in industry is pulling $400k/year (everything included of course). I do not share the view that academic job is inherently better. For that kind of money, I am willing to give it a try.

Some prfessors in fact make reasonable money. The website says that a Penn full professor earns $160 (on average?).

But I wouldn't consider a full prof. at Penn to be average.

[dr_zack]

YIKES!  That's crazy. 

I was hired at $20,000 a year more than that in the social sciences (mid sized state university), got 2 raises in my first 18 months, am unionized, and teach a 3-3.  I'm glad I did rotten in history.  :-)

History can be rough. I was hired at $44K. Furloughed this year, and probably looking at $41,200 pre-tax. No raises in sight, no union, no cost of living. 4-4.

[seniorscholar]

A now-deceased family member remembered the days when he couldn't afford to take a job at Harvard -- both Harvard and Yale once had among the lowest salaries of reputable universities, because they assumed anyone who "would be hired" to teach there had an independent income in any case. (Ever wonder what "gentleman and scholar" once meant?) Of course these were also the days when most academic jobs were filled by the department chair calling a contact elsewhere and asking him for the name of one of his graduate students who was looking for a position. Said relative subsequently spent his career at the University of Wisconsin.

Note: all gendered pronouns in the above message are intentional. And the University of Wisconsin (like other state flagship universities) did not have then a dash and a place name after it.

[neil9]

That is the difference between us. I am willing to jump ship if a company doubles my salary even if I have to work much harder. First, my current job is not easy task either. Second, middle level or middle high level manager job in a company is not that bad at all. Yes, you will have to work harder but you do have many people working for you. Third, if I earn enough money, I can retire early. Fourth, I will not earn Nobel prize by any stretch. So publishing 5 or 10 more papers makes little difference in the long run. But if I have more money, I can have a scholarship named after me.

 

If you mean "reasonable" as in "deserved", then I'd agree.  If you mean "reasonable" as in you think that is a normal salary or that you require this kind of dough to "be happy" than THAT is scary to me.  Also, I;d not work like a slave in some Fortune 500 company -- and deal with all that that entails even for $400,000.  My freedom and flexibility are priceless.
 

But I wouldn't consider a full prof. at Penn to be average.
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[temporaryname]

<snip>

4. To compare our earnings to those in other professions, it's important to take the 9 month salary and add 33%. Thus, someone making $40k is theoretically earning at the same rate as someone making a bit over $53k. Of course, theoretical money <> real money. This "summer off" time gives one some freedom.

<snip>

This assumes that (a) everybody on the tenure track actually can afford, in terms of remaining productive in research, to teach in the summer, and (b) that everybody on the tenure track who wants to teach in the summer can actually get a summer contract, rather than those going to much, much cheaper adjunct faculty.

Also, 33%? I suppose there are places where you can make a full 33% of your salary in summer teaching, but I've never worked there. The best I've ever done is 11% for one course. I could have gotten 18% for two or 25% for three or more, but I had no desire to kill my research program and work myself into a nervous breakdown over the course of a short summer term.

[janedoh]

<snip>

4. To compare our earnings to those in other professions, it's important to take the 9 month salary and add 33%. Thus, someone making $40k is theoretically earning at the same rate as someone making a bit over $53k. Of course, theoretical money <> real money. This "summer off" time gives one some freedom.

<snip>

This assumes that (a) everybody on the tenure track actually can afford, in terms of remaining productive in research, to teach in the summer, and (b) that everybody on the tenure track who wants to teach in the summer can actually get a summer contract, rather than those going to much, much cheaper adjunct faculty.

Also, 33%? I suppose there are places where you can make a full 33% of your salary in summer teaching, but I've never worked there. The best I've ever done is 11% for one course. I could have gotten 18% for two or 25% for three or more, but I had no desire to kill my research program and work myself into a nervous breakdown over the course of a short summer term.

In many science and engineering fields, it is possible to get summer salary from research grants. In my field, many (most?) successful TT profs can raise their 33% via this mechanism, especially at research oriented schools.

[ucprof]

To elaborate on the 33% on grants-  Some agencies do not allow this (NSF for example) but with grants from more than one agency or multiple grants from the same non-NSF agency (e.g. ONR or ARO) one can get three ninths in the summer.  Since many people in STEM fields have opportunities outside of academia it's important to compare apples to apples on salary, i.e. 9 month + summer in comparison to 12 month in industry.
That said, summer salary on grants has to be raised, it is not guaranteed by the institution and requires one to maintain a very active program in research and to compete for funding sometimes with only a 5-10% funding rate (or even less in some cases). On the other hand if you are in industry, you have no job security so one has to remain active all around in such a job if one wants to keep the job.  Thus I think it's fair to compare academic salary + summer salary against 12 month salaries in industry.  The details of the accounting also may depend on the university.  Some universities for example frown upon taking three ninths (MIT is one, which I find bizarre, but there it is).  Some other places guarantee more than 9 months salary but expect you to try to raise some of it (CalTech is one where they pay something like an 11 month salary but are happy if you raise some of it on grants).  But the majority of US universities pay a 9 month salary and allow for up to 3 months of additional salary in the summer on grants.  As far as I know the US is one of the few places in the world with this system.  Most other countries pay full salary and the research budget is for students/postdocs/equipment etc.  Frankly I think it makes a lot of sense to have PI salary as part of the grant.  It provides incentive to do good work and to actually put your time on the project.  It also provides a direct financial incentive to stay active in research.  If people were guaranteed a fixed salary regardless of research productivity, how much incentive would there be to produce?

[neutralname]

One of my colleagues recently taught on a cruise ship over the summer.  I guess the students were relatively properous people in middle age or older.  I don't know how much it pays, but you get free accommodation and food.  

It doesn't appeal to me at all, but some people seem to like it.