PROMISE @ UMBC: Graduate Student Development
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Yes, professors *DO* make more than $100,000/year! Here are some recent salaries …

Throughout the last several years, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) graduate students who participate in PROMISE: Maryland’s AGEP have given various reasons for and against planning to choose careers in the academy.  Among reasons against becoming a faculty member, students have told us that “professors don’t make any money” or that “professors are poor.”  Students may be surprised to learn that they are often making assumptions without any data.  We’ve found it interesting that students who really wanted to teach and have a research program were considering going to industry because they thought that they wouldn’t make a decent living as a professor.  To combat this notion, over the years, PROMISE has been giving students opportunities to hear from, and talk with, STEM faculty  from around the country during our PROMISE Summer Success Institutes (SSI).  The students learned that not only were many of the professors making a very comfortable salary, but that many were, by their own admission, “living large!”  Students were not aware that many faculty salaries are based on a 9 month scale, which means that faculty can do something else for 3 months in the summer, including taking advantage of other opportunities to make even more money.  Some faculty choose to supplement incomes through grant funding, teaching a summer class, or working on a project in another university/industry/government lab.  Some faculty choose to take the summer off to travel, spend time with family, or as PROMISE  faculty “Mentor-in-Residence”  put it, “go fishing.”

The following table presents a sample of faculty salaries from a few STEM fields at different ranks:  Assistant Professor (entry-level, immediately following completion of a PhD or postdoctoral appointment), Associate Professor (after tenure, which generally requires 7 years of experience and a strong record of research and publications, teaching, and service), and Full Professor (promotion after having the qualifications of Associate Professor, achieving national/international reputation for scholarship, continued service to the university.) For more information on faculty rankings, see the 2011 “Promotion and Tenure” policies for UMBC as an example:   http://www.umbc.edu/provost/Faculty_Handbook/section6.pdf.  The numbers in the table showcase a range of salaries based on faculty rank for a few STEM fields. Some of the ranges represent high end or top levels of salaries, and others are medians. The time frame also varies as some numbers represent salary paid out over 9 months, while others represent an annual 12 month salary.

Department Assistant  Associate Full Time frame
Biomedical Engineering $83,508 $98,328 $138,162  9 month (As of 2011)
Electrical and Computer Eng. $84,582 $96,183 $123,568  9 month (As of 2011)
All, Community College $86,501 $95,431 $105,300 12 month (As of 2010)
Chemistry $74,000 $91,000  $142,550 11-12 month (As of 2009)
Physics $76,000 $102,000  $174,000 11-12 month (As of 2006)

NOTES.  Information has been compiled from the following sources:

The Chronicle of Higher Education has additional data that breaks out median, 9 month salaries based on type of institution.  These data are based on information from more than 1,000 colleges and universities http://chronicle.com/article/Faculty-Salaries-at-More-Than/127041/.  The Chronicle also has an American Association of University Professors (AAUP) Faculty Salary Survey that will allow readers to look at 2010-2011 salary data by state, name of institution, year, or category of institution.   http://chronicle.com/stats/aaup/.  To learn more about categories or classifications of institutions, see the Carnegie Foundation’s classification descriptions:  http://classifications.carnegiefoundation.org/descriptions/basic.php.
PROMISE is Maryland’s Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP), and as one of the more than 20 AGEPs across the country that serve graduate students, we present students with options related to careers in the academy.  PROMISE is sponsored by the National Science Foundation, therefore the information provided here has primarily focused on STEM fields, although data from the Chronicle and CCBC charts do not specify disciplines.  As we conclude, we return to the initial question: “Can you earn a comfortable living as a professor?” The answer is, “Yes, indeed you can.”
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[Note (Added 4/6/12, 12:57 PM): The salaries listed in the table have different time frames; the 5th column on the far right of the table indicates these time periods and specifies whether the salaries are based on a 9 month scale or an annual 12 month scale.  For example, according to the table, an assistant professor in biomedical engineering has a median salary of $83,508 on a 9 month scale.  This corresponds to an annual salary of $111,344. Similarly, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering has a median salary of $96,183 over 9 months, which corresponds to a 12 month salary of $128,244.  The salaries posted for the community college are on a 12 month scale as indicated by the far right column.  In this case, the community college salary posted represents a median for all disciplines.  This grouping of all disciplines differs from the posted salary for the engineers which only includes a median among engineering faculty salaries.  Salaries for faculty STEM fields are higher than those for many other disciplines. Salaries for medical school faculty, not included here and excluded from the AAUP's survey posted by The Chronicle, are much higher than those in other fields.  Faculty often receive 9 months of salary from their academic departments, and they supplement three additional months of "summer salary" with grants funding or other activities. ]

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