Friday, April 14, 2006

Fun With Number Two

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File this one under: Huh?

Money Magazine just reported that the second-best job to have in the country (behind software engineer, at number one) is "college professor." Money's rankings are based on level of stress, pay, and growth possibilities, among other things. Money acknowledges that competition for tenure-track jobs will remain stiff, but that higher demand for faculty is bound to happen, given an exploding population of students. Money thinks that the average professor's salary is 82K a year.

"So by 'college professor' do they mean 'full professor'?" you ask. The answer is no. Apparently they are factoring in what they call "moonlighting adjuncts" as well. It's a good thing they factor these in, too, since the fantasy that retiring tenured professors will be replaced by tenure-track lines is, well, a fantasy. In the meantime, if anybody knows anyone who has one of these low-stress, high-paying jobs, let me know.

6 comments:

lil'rumpus said...

82k! WTF? I need THAT job.

Anonymous said...

How do they wind up with an average of $82,000, especially if they are factoring in adjunct teachers? This is crazy.

Plus, they are clearly living in some sort of dreamland if they think that the higher demand for teachers is actually going to lead to more tenure-track jobs. Sigh. It is a nice dreamland, though.

Sfrajett said...

So really what they mean is, "college professor in business or technology with lots of corporate backing and bonuses." Not yer run of the mill college professor, kids.

lucyrain said...

Exactly, s. Definitely not "run of the mill."

Totally offensive. Especially when I think of all the money-grubbing boneheads who will apply to grad school because they actually believe the characterization of professordom in the report.

Scrivener said...

Don't forget the law profs too! I think the b-school people and the law profs have fairly low-stress, high-paying jobs. From what I hear, it's not all that hard to get a law prof job (if you graduate from a top law school), and they usually teach a 2-2 load, with classes that are pretty much standardized so they don't require tons of prep time and low grading demands. Plus, they get consulting gigs on the side.

Margaret said...

It ain't that tough to get a job as a b-prof, too, and I *know* that many/most skills pay them more than us lackeys in the humanities and social sciences. Gah, what rubbish!