Career Overview: College Professor

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the middle 50% of all post-secondary teachers earn between $36,590 and $72,490. The average annual salary of only full-time faculty is $68,505 per year. However, the average salary for full professors is over $90,000 per year.

Last year, Money Magazine from CNN.com rated college professor as the second best job in America-after software engineer.

Being a professor is the one job that can pay out huge salaries, but gets less stressful as you move up through the ranks. According to Money Magazine top-earning professors make as much as $550,000 annually.

An accounting professor at University of Georgia says that a new hire, straight out of grad school, will easily earn over $100,000 per year teaching Accounting.

Additionally, college professors have fairly flexible schedules. They must teach classes a few hours a week, and hold office hours for their students.

However, the professor can usually choose their own office hours, and then choose when and where they will complete the rest of their duties and paperwork.

Professors at universities that value research above all get paid the most. However, they must also produce a certain amount of research and get that research published to secure a permanent position.

Required Education

The most difficult part of being a professor is getting the required education to be one.

To become a tenured professor, you must have a PhD in your field. This is time consuming, expensive, and difficult.

You do not need to have an undergraduate degree related to the field in order to get a PhD and teach in the area. For example, if you majored in English as an undergraduate student, it is possible to get a PhD in Finance and then teach Finance.

However, to get admitted to a top graduate program, you must prove you can do the work. A high GPA in your undergraduate major may be all it takes, but if your undergraduate major is radically different than your intended PhD, you may wish to try a Masters degree in the subject first to get some groundwork in the topic.

Tenure Track