Question for those of you who currently teach at the University level. [View all]
If you were to choose today would you choose to be a College Professor? My husband and I had this discussion last night, he is in his 18th year as a professor and we are both thinking he should have gone to a national lab or industry.
Sad thing is, he loves teaching, loves his students and interacting with them. However, the federal funding is drying up, no more research money for many people. We lost summer salary when his NSF grant ended and was not renewed. That took a third of his salary. He is teaching this summer, but they could only give him one class, a 4 week class and a payment of $2000 for teaching a class of 100. Not even close to what we lost with the grant.
No raises for the past few years and with no grant right now, (there are 6 in the pipeline to be reviewed), there won't be any. Everything is based on research, not teaching.
I don't think we would choose this path if we were coming out now with student loans. It is hard not to discourage young grad students who want to follow him to the classroom.
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