Unsure and Underpaid: No Surprises Here

TIAA-CREF just released a study about early career professors, focusing on those in tenure-track positions. The goal was to learn more about how they assessed their graduate school training and their confidence in their ability to do their current work. The study also covered several other important topics, including the extent to which assistant professors must rely on outside sources of income to make ends meet.

The study finds that the majority of new faculty feel unprepared to do their job, with women reporting lower levels of confidence in their abilities than men. Furthermore most faculty are working for pay outside of their institution, earning between $6-15K per year to supplement their approx $50K 9-month base salaries.

Let me just say : No surprises here! When I landed this very sweet job at Wisconsin, having just graduated from the highly-regarded sociology program at U. Pennsylvania, I arrived and immediately felt as incompetent as I've ever felt in my life. On a daily (hourly) basis I found myself thinking (saying), "I have NO idea how to do this. I can't do this. I'm terrible at this. I'm going to get fired..." I felt bad for my first class of graduate students, most of whom could tell (as their later evaluations revealed) that I hadn't a clue how to teach. In fact, it was my first class ever, since I spent my time at Penn wisely building the research portfolio that enabled me to get a job at a great school like Wisconsin. I never TA'd, and most certainly never taught a summer course-- I've still never taught in the summer actually-- since I was socialized to understand the importance of grant-writing and publishing, relative to those other potential activities.

As for doing non-University work, I've been doing that since grad school too. How was I to survive on $13K per year in Philadelphia, if I insisted on being able to enjoy a good meal once in awhile, and to live alone, rather than with a roommate, so I could get some work done? Certainly some might rightly consider my priorities there a tad off, but the point isn't whether they were right or wrong, but that they led me to seek consulting. When I started consulting I was a third-year grad students (with an MA), and earned about $600-800/day. By the time I graduated I was working for 3 different organizations, and had a couple of dissertation fellowships, bringing my annual income up to approximately $30K. This made for a very hectic, but decent life.

It's very, very hard to consult while doing the work required of an assistant professor, but as my 9 month salary is only $57K, I absolutely have to. Before having a child, maybe it was more or less optional, but now with my annual childcare bill running around $15K, it's a necessity. Since I began here I've done somewhere between $5-15K of consulting a year, and most of the time those gigs are directly related to my academic work, get me good outside connections in the policy world, and will (eventually) result in some peer-reviewed pubs.

I say all this to put more specifics and a face on the survey statistics TIAA-CREF collected. I could envision some positive ways universities could work to minimize outside consulting without having to officially increase our salaries-- for example, by awarding us a cut of the indirect costs associated with our grants, or allowing internal grants to be used to cover childcare, or by providing a childcare stipend or quality on-campus childcare with enough spaces available for faculty kids... In the absence of that-- and perhaps even in the presence of it, since many consult because they enjoy it, and not because they need the money for childcare-- outside work will go on.

Now, lest I leave you with the impression that I dislike my gig here, a few parting thoughts. If I had it to do over again, I say with 99% certainty that I'd still choose a faculty career. And I haven't even enjoyed tenure yet. I'm not alone -- 92% of those in the TIAA-CREF survey said the same, even though more than one third report that the workload is heavier than they expected. According to the survey, we love our jobs because we enjoy teaching, working on campus, and serving society and we like the challenge the job presents. We stay in spite of a workload we find too heavy, pay that is too low, and the knowledge that work often takes priority over the rest of our lives, leading our family and friends to criticize us, we don't see them as often, and we work even when we're sick. Barely one fourth of us feel that we have time to read for pleasure or keep up with the news, and only slightly more find the time to exercise. Yet we stay, and we want to stay. Odd ducks, aren't we?