Post Academic

Caroline’s posts on Glassdoor.com are invaluable for getting a sense of what people are making, especially outside of academia.  To pick up on her last post, here are a few links that show what professors of different ranks from different fields in various parts of the country make.  Many of the sites have easy search functions that can help you isolate the data you want.  It’s good for comparison shopping, whether you are looking to try and leverage a raise for your next merit review or figure out the opportunity cost of going post-academic or just nosy.

The links to the nitty-gritty are below the jump:

General Resources

American Association of University Professors (AAUP) Faculty Salary Survey for 2008-09 (via The Chronicle of Higher Ed): This database provides basic information on professors’ salaries, broken down by rank.  It allows for searches by region, year, and institution type.  If you’re an Assistant Prof in the humanities who looks enviously at someone of the same rank at, say, Stanford or Harvard who  makes six figures, those numbers might be inflated by schools with heavy scientific research agendas and med schools.  Just hazarding a guess here.

The College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR), 2009-10 National Faculty Salary Survey( via HigherEdJobs.com ): This survey breaks down salaries by both academic field and rank, including “new assistant professor” and “instructor” categories.  There are some more higher ed salary surveys on the site as well, linked here.

More Specific Searches

University of California Employees Salary Database (via the Orange County Register–ick!): I’d really rather not link the website of this conservative bastion, but the OC Register has the most easily accessible and comprehensive interface to search for specific individual UC salaries, which are on public record.  You can search by campus, according to highest salaries (hint: think football and basketball coaches), and even by name, if that doesn’t make you feel like a creepy stalker.  If you do look at individual salary data, you will notice that you can make a whole lot more in “Extra Pay” taking on administrative roles.  SFGate.com (the online portal of what is now the shell of the SF Chronicle) also has a UC salary search from 2005, if you want to look for any trends in salaries at the UC.

Academic Jobs Wiki, English Professors Salary Offers for 2010-11 AY: The folks using the English lit fields job search Wiki have compiled a list of salaries, mostly for Assistant Profs starting jobs in Fall 2010.  There’s also some discussion at the bottom of the page.  There’s also 2009-10 AY version of the salary Wiki.

Sampling of Philosophy Professors’ salaries (via Leiter Reports philosophy blog): I followed a tip from a friend who’s in Philosophy and found the Leiter Reports blog, which provides lots of good job-oriented gossip, which would be really interesting if I were in the field.  This Brian Leiter fellow also compiles the Philosophical Gourmet philosophy departments ranking, which would also be really interesting if I knew anything about the discipline.  Anyhow, the salary list I’m linking here is culled from a single “major public research university with a reputable and PGR-ranked philosophy department and PhD program” by Leiter.  Note that seniority in many cases doesn’t yield a higher salary in this particular department.

We’ll keep looking for different sites with salary info, whether in academia or comparing academia and post-academia salaries.  Do also drop us a line if you have other good sources of salary information, which we’ll post here with a hat tip to you!

Zimbabwe 100,000,000,000 (That’s One Hundred Billion!) Dollars Bill from Wikimedia Commons, public domain