As I get older I keep encountering the great discrepancy between theory/concept and reality in application. This comes to a head for me right now as I approach the twilight years of my graduate school career and have to answer people (read, strangers) as to what my career aspirations are. This is made difficult by the fact that I find few people understand what I do, let alone what the career progression for an academic is.
This point is driven home for me, when I see that Forbes has listed University Professor as the least stressful job (link: http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2013/01/03/the-least-stressful-jobs-of-2013/). While every profession likes to think that their profession is hard, I would actually argue that our career progression and performance evaluations on its face makes the assertion of 'least stressful’ laughable. For the first part, no one can graduate with a bachelors degree and become a university professor (discounting teaching assistantships during graduate school wherein one is forced to teach undergraduate students). There is a clearly defined progression that is followed, where a young student first gains mastery in graduate school, hones skills in postdoctoral research, risks everything during an assistant professorship, and hopefully makes tenure after which a promotion to full professor is attained.
During this entire time, your fate is not determined solely by yourself or effort either. Manuscripts, grants, and hiring are determined by a constantly shifting committee of peers who are often locked with you in mortal combat for the same positions, funds, and recognition. While science is not a zero sum game, I frequently encounter other scientists who feel that any other work could slight the importance of their own. Even describing the process I find it stressful. This lack of control over one’s circumstances has been known to produce high levels of stress in people. Especially, when these reviews and metrics are essential to the continuation and establishment of our careers.
From the other perspective, there is the pay. While research has shown that most people are sufficiently happy with $70,000 per year, this doesn’t describe the typical pay range of an academic. True, Forbes cites the median pay of a University Professor as $62,500, which is unerringly close to that magic number and GlassDoor even raises that median figure to $71,400, that payday is far away when the start is considered.
After graduation with a bachelor’s degree in the United States an able-bodied adult has 43 working years ahead of them assuming retirement at 65 (because, hell yeah! Medicare and Social Security!). However, eating away at this number is an average of 6 years in graduate school, 4-7 years conducting postdoctoral research, and then 5-6 more years as an assistant professor before receiving tenure. While the promotion to professor is typically after tenure is granted I’ll even allow that the two happen simultaneously. Using median salary numbers from GlassDoor, we find that if everything goes as perfectly described in the above timeline that Johnny Graduate Student will net $3,777,250 over their working lifetime. That seems like a large sum of money, but remember that Johnny sacrificed quite a bit of his life in low pay and uncertain circumstances to make it to that point.
Now let’s investigate what happens to Sally Smarty who chose to do something as else, such as getting a bachelor’s in:
- Electrical Engineering, $4,058,247
- Business Analyst (Who knows what degree this even corresponds to), $3,875,934
(assuming a standard pay raise of 3% per year with the pay capped at the maximum known entry pay for the field, figures from GlassDoor). For the sake of argument let’s say that Sally Smarty really wanted to continue in school but wanted a more applicable degree than a generic doctorate and went to get her PharmD. That degree will take her an extra 5 years as compared to just receiving a bachelor’s resulting in 38 workable years, but her pay will balloon to $4,665,386.
Now obviously, I am doing a lot of hand waving here but the point is that even if we do attain our dream job of University Professor that the pay later in life only makes up what was lost in the beginning. Even then, we still pull behind others who didn’t need additional schooling and went directly to a more profitable career. To make the situation even worse, our professional lives are not free from the influences of the outside world as is typically thought. When the economy crashed in 2008 there was a direct impact on the finances of universities and new professorship opportunities dried up. As it is right now, we have top postdoctoral candidates who have been applying for 2 years in attempt to get one of the few available professorship positions at a university. While this is a boon for universities, with fierce competition and large numbers of applicants they are able to take significantly better applicants than would be otherwise available, this is yet another roadblock in our scientific career progression.
And to think, I’ve made it this far in my writing and have yet to even begun describe the difficulties of actually doing the least stressful job, I’ve only outlined the stress necessary to make it to the job. While it could be said that this will happen in any other field, I think in very few is the process so rigid. For us, it is an ever-thinning pipeline and to fail out at one step presents no lateral option that will allow us to get back into the pipeline. If one cannot do exemplary postdoctoral research there is no option to go to industry work for a few years and then apply for a professorial position. It’s generally agreed upon that once someone is out, they will most likely stay out of academia.
Now this isn’t just to paint a bleak picture or complain about how this job can be difficult but to really consider what is stress. Most professors I know do agree with the sentiment in the article, that they are exceedingly happy with their job and deeply satisfied. But to think that happiness and satisfaction is the same as low-stress or that becoming a University Professor is something that is easily obtainable is far from the truth and dishonest to convey to young adults in high school who consider it as a career. We pursue this career because we love it, not because it pays well, is stress free, or easy.
—Adam Pah