Advice For All Graduate Students and Jr. Faculty

[formerprof22]

I wrote a much longer post and deleted it. If anyone wants more information please ask. The short version of my original post is:

Please consider a different career and stop accepting terrible pay for your labor. This career is difficult and unless there are some dramatic structural changes, I find it unlikely that most of you will be able to find happiness as a sociology professor. I left a tenured position in May and I wish I had done it 10 years earlier. I nearly tripled my salary ($65,000 to $150,000) by going into industry, I have weekends off, I finally make enough to envision a future, and I have time to spend with my partner who felt very neglected over the past decade as I always had to put my research or students first while chasing after tenure.

I was one of the lucky ones, I entered grad school funded, I got a TT my first year on the market, and sailed into tenure with no resistance from the department or administration. However, everyone that I know who started their PhD around 2005 and obtained a tenure track job is miserable. The pay is no where near enough, the work is overwhelming, and it puts a lot of pressure on your personal relationships. Everyone who made it to an R1 is dying from pressure and department politics and everyone who ended up a teaching/research school is broke and sick of living in poverty stricken rural towns. 

Starting TT professors should get at least 100K. I don't care if this is R1 or teaching research or community. You have a PhD and are highly skilled, you deserve a real income. I was looking through the job board and some CSU school offering you $68,000 to live in Fresno is nonsense or even worse, some SUNY school offering you pennies to live some decaying rust belt town is insulting. Some business professors at these same schools start at over $100,000, you should as well. People with MAs that go straight into industry jobs can start at $120,000 if they land in a tech or finance company, you should be at least making $100,000 with a PhD. 

Finally, when I would complain to my colleagues about how terrible our pay is compared to our education and responsibilities they used to bring up the plight of people in low-level service jobs or even the median income in the USA. Those are not good reference points. The proper reference points are other professionals. Compare your salary to those working in finance, tech, law, medicine, or some other well paying sector. You are in the top 3% in terms of education. You have skills that others do not. You deserve to get paid for that knowledge and the years you put into school. And, don't forget it isn't just yearly income but the amount of money you'll make over your career/lifetime as well as the debts you incur while chasing after a PhD or tenure. 

[Glad you got out]

$65k and working weekends really is bad. I'm glad you got out. (We can recognize that it's really bad and that PhD-job pay should compensate for the years of lost income and retirement during the PhD, without saying that the low pay for other workers is ok. It isn't.)

There are TT jobs that are much, much better than that (I started my PhD around the same time as you and I'm really happy in my job), but there are far too few. Good luck to everyone.

[formerprof22]

I'm glad you are one of the few who made it into a TT job that isn't terrible. For most, we won't find such a reward for pushing through graduate school. Most won't find a tenure track job and the majority of "lucky" ones will be earning far less than they deserve. This low pay will be even harder on those who move to rural poverty stricken areas where their partners will not be able to find a job.

If we look at some of the public universities that are in the jobs of interest section, we see that the pay for most of them is less than reasonable. Of the four that posted the pay or that I could find public records to see what the current assistant professors were making half pay less than the median income for a person over the age of 25 working full-time with a Bachelor's degree, $74,000. Only one pays more than the median income of those with an MA, $86,000. These are jobs for those who "made it." They aren't adjuncts, they aren't bouncing from VAP to VAP, they are the ones who landed in the best positions sociology has to offer and the pay doesn't even beat the median income for those with a BA. How can anyone recommend for someone to spend a decade in graduate school to chase after a job that doesn't even hit the median income?
www.bls.gov/emp/chart-unemployment-earnings-education.htm

James Madison: $62,000 for TT.
CU Boulder: $90,000 TT.
Mississippi State: $ 84,000 TT.
Fresno State: $72,000 TT.

Couple these salaries with high pressure R1 departments or 4/4 or 4/5 teaching-research positions and you have a recipe for a difficult life.

Finally, "saying that the low pay for other workers is ok. It isn't." I'm glad we agree. And, please let me know where you see in my post where it says low-pay or poverty-wages for those working low level service jobs is acceptable or a good thing for society. As my point was that sociology needs to stop using the people who are at the bottom of the socio-economic hierarchy to justify their low-reward jobs. I did this for years, it is a very poor choice of a reference point. The correct reference points are business professors who can make over $200,000 at R1 schools, people who work in finance, tech, law, etc. Much of field focuses on the plight of those at the bottom of society, which might be skewing our view of reality. If the average person who works full-time with a Bachelors degree gets paid $74,000, we certainly deserve at least $30,000 more than this when starting at any TT job to make up for all the years we spent in school.

We all lose time making money as graduate students, many of us take out loans to make ends meet as graduate students, and for the ones who "make it" into the coveted TT job, they should actually have some reward rather than just the "prestige" of constantly stressing about publishing in ASR or being an underpaid and overworked camp councilor at a teaching-research university in a rural decaying town. Current students need to be shown the reality of what chasing after a TT looks like and what the reward actually looks like. Life should be a lot better than what sociology jobs are offering and students need to stop accepting them until they get better. 

[Agreed]

Agreed, and everyone who has options to go out of academia, I encourage you to consider exploring alternatives.

I am currently on tenure track AP at a state university (R2). I am in the job market again for several reasons formerprof22 mentioned - expecting to land in a better-paid position than here, with more support, although not sure it will be very successful.

Probably everyone who comes here has been considered academic jobs (I mean, tenure track faculty positions) for a long time, and it might be discouraging - but if you have some other options, faculty jobs might not be the first ideal option. Most tenure-track jobs are abnormally lowly paid, and decent-paid jobs are minimal. If you could publish multiple top-tier journals annually, you could secure R1 jobs easily, but otherwise, the chance of securing decent positions is lower than expectations. Compared with the previous application, I added several more publications, including top journal articles, but I have 0% confidence about my future as I know it will not guarantee anything in the market, especially since I found a relatively smaller number of jobs than last year so far (I guess!)

But in any case, those in this job market have their own goals and motives, so it's naturally the third and fourth opinion - not even the second opinion. I hope we all can find good and optimal pathways.