If you’re in an undersubscribed technical field, there will be more complications because you will be deciding between a relatively lucrative job in industry that gives you a lot of resources but little in the way of choice in what you work on or job security, and a university gig with a shot at tenure which guarantees nothing in terms of resources but complete discretion in what you do and how you do it, and allows you to do it essentially for life.

Have no illusions though – whether you find the profession joyous or utterly frustrating (most of us find it both at times), you will be judged on “output”, and this usually comes down to cold, hard cash and numbers of publications. If you don’t have funding and lots of it, the publications won’t be forthcoming so essentially you’re a used car salesman being judged on your “numbers”. Some schools such as MIT have a direct formulation for this – so many dollars per year per square foot of lab space.

You are hired to filter money out of any institution you can find, give more than half of it to the university (we lose 57% off the top) and then spend the rest on students, equipment and publication costs. If you’re lucky, you may be able to pay for a few “summer months” of salary since you’re on a 9-month appointment anyway but most of the time it gets eaten up in student salaries (student pay, plus their tuition costs and benefits which goes back to the university again). A graduate student currently costs approximately $50,000+ per year in “raw” funding to keep in the lab at a dismal final salary (ca. 20K per year).

Note that teaching hasn’t been mentioned here, since it is a non-priority at research universities. Nobody who brings in a lot of research funding has ever been denied tenure or otherwise penalized because they’re a lousy teacher. Bring in enough money and teach poorly and you’ll find that you’re simply not asked to teach. Fortunately, for the most part, faculty take both their teaching and their responsibilities to students very seriously as a matter of professionalism – in my 20 years here I have never heard a sexist or racist comment about students, which I find remarkable and admirable.

Why do it? Because you’re free to indulge your mind, free to take on any task you can make work and free to tell your boss “no” when it becomes necessary. This last one is important because, unfortunately, university administrations hire the brightest people they can find and expect them to be selectively stupid about poor management methods and decisions, so the hard-won tenure that was originally awarded to avoid retribution for unpopular opinions or public criticism is often used for bureaucratic infighting.

It’s quite a ride, and requires both hard work and a good sense of balance so that your personal life doesn’t disappear among the many demands, but I don’t regret it for a moment.

I am 27 and married, so the next hurdle is trying to provide a stable family environment while advancing my academic career. Perhaps a Ph.D. will have to wait until my future children are out of the house!

It is so funny that you mentioned that however because his favourite class in his senior year was Hons. European History – Great books.

If I had it to do all over again and knew that I would likely pursue some form of graduate education (MBA, law, etc.), I would spend my undergraduate years on a great books style program such as they have at St. John’s, University of Dallas, or a few other schools.

My son is heading out to freshman year in college this fall. He is not sure what he wants to do but college professor has been bandied about, so has law, anthropologist etc.

The comments from and about those in the business/technical fields vs humanities are rather enlightening.

How does one advise a youngster who doesn’t have much of a clue of what he wants to do but worries about job prospects and financial stability?

We do not “choose” who to interview really. They choose us. People who want to take part in the series contact us and volunteer themselves. I thought the job of professor was a good one to cover. There’s absolutely no religious bias on AoM. If an atheist professor from an Ivy League school who studied evolution would have contacted us first, I would have been just as happy to interview him.