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After a few stresful weeks of trying to figure out what I want to do with my life I decided I want to go into being a college professor.
I would like to teach at the community college level, in the Psychology department.
I am about a year away from finishing my B.S. in Psychology through NAU and I am wondering what I can do to get on the right track for becoming a professor?
I do not want to work at a university, I prefer the smaller classes and the community college vibe.
Any advice would be great, I have no idea if I need a different degree or what?
Graduate school. You need at least a masters degree to teach college, and many prefer that their full time faculty have a PhD. However, many community colleges have very few full time faculty and reply on adjunct part-timers to teach their courses. This is especially true with all the budget cuts lately. Best of luck!
Graduate school. You need at least a masters degree to teach college, and many prefer that their full time faculty have a PhD. However, many community colleges have very few full time faculty and reply on adjunct part-timers to teach their courses. This is especially true with all the budget cuts lately. Best of luck!
I definetly plan on getting my Masters, but I am not sure what to get my masters in? Do I keep doing psychology or take teaching classes?
My fiance is going to be working in schools for the rest of her life, and I have always wanted to be a teacher, so this works out great, we'll be on a similiar schedule, travel during the summer hopefully!
Travel during the summer lol. You won't be able to afford to get away for the summer on adjunct wages, you'll be trying to snag summer courses to teach during the summer so you can pay rent is what you'll do with your summer...
College level teaching is largely a money-less proposition. Spend the better part of a decade to be qualified to take a non-tenure track semester-by-semester adjunct job, make that jobS, since most people attempt to tie several adjunct jobs together to string as close to a full time paycheck as possible. You'll be floating in the 40-50K for the better part of a decade, and let's assume you snag a tenure track job, 6 year probationary period is not uncommon and as soon as the economy hiccups, guess what, you're all of a sudden not contributing to the department like they expected and don't get tenure. Forget that.
Remember, it is cheaper for schools to pay a bunch of adjunct no benefits than have a bunch of tenured employees sucking on the teet. Schools are businesses, not places of higher learning or such other nonsense. There is a GLUT of people with advanced degrees with no reliable job prospects. That's what happens when everybody bumrushes college in the flawed assumption that it's the ticket to an above median income, attendance cost be damned. As such, most people default to teaching as a backup. That well is dry though. You'll find an adjunct job no doubt, you just will make no money to run a household, particularly among the "well I have advanced degrees, why the hell whould I live like a high school graduate on this chump change" crowd.
Get a more lucrative career even if it sucks, and teach on the side for giggles, which is what they pay anyways. Buddy of mine went civil service, makes 85K as a GS-12 equivalent after years of spinning his wheels being the invisible adjunct at several Boston area colleges. Now he only pursues the odd end course for "play money" and a sense of self-actualization, but if he had to rely on teaching to attain his lifestyle goals, he'd hate what he said he loved to do.
Is your fiancee going to be a secondary school (HS/MS) or elementary/pre-school teacher? After you get your master's, try to become one of those and you can possibly travel summers together. But there's a lot more of a glut than there used to be; you MAY get a job in a reasonable time if you specialize in secondary math or science, though be prepared to teach in the inner-city if you want a job quickly. You also could get a job quicker if you go for special ed. The pay isn't good either (some districts start as high as almost $50K (usually areas that are expensive to live in), but usually in the $30s), but between the two of you you'd live OK and your salary will probably go up each year and if you are not cut due to budgets within 3-5 years of the job, you'd probably have tenure and eventually make a salary of $70-100K, not too shabby at all.
Most of what's being said about colleges nowadays is unfortunately true. My sister is a tenured professor (of Psychology too) at a small regular (non-community) college in the Buffalo area, but she did all that in the early 90s when it was a little easier and kind of got lucky even then. To give you an idea of how "cheap" colleges are, she was made dept. chair and didn't even get a raise for that, when three years went by and she only got one raise (that she would've received even if not dept. chair), she quit (the chairship, having tenure let her keep her "regular" job).
Amen, Hindsight2020! The ratio of full-time faculty to part-time adjuncts has slowly, over the past few years, tipped in favor of the part-timers. The "favor" part is purely tongue in cheek.
The colleges and universities benefit financially by staffing fewer and fewer full time employees, who require things like offices and health benefits and pensions. Part-time adjuncts get none of these. As Hindsight said, these institutions are businesses. Their own bottom line tells them that they must reduce their full-time faculty and get as many part-time adjuncts to teach as they possibly can. They have no problem finding part-time adjuncts.
Average pay for an adjunct, depending on the degree and the subject being taught, can range upward from $1500 for a semester's work. Let's take the last national average I saw for undergrad humanities: $2,000 per class. If the college has 3 semesters a year, and the adjunct is lucky enough to snag 2 classes each semester (which I understand is the customary maximum because anything over 2 classes might move that adjunct into full-time status) the adjunct is looking at about a $12,000 a year salary (6 classes @ $2,000).
Is that a living wage? Could you pay for your health insurance and add to your IRA out of a $12,000 per year salary? Probably not. Which explains why most adjuncts, who are probably in debt already due to student loans required to obtain those advanced degrees, will teach at more than one college/university, and have zero allegiance or loyalty to the school. Heck, they're trying to pay the rent and for all the gas they burn getting from one college to the other!
If that question was directed at Hindsight2020 and me, the answer is yes. To investigate further, I suggest you read a couple of higher ed websites: Chronicle(dot)com (particularly their forums) and Insidehighered(dot)com. Lots of facts and info there to help you make your decision.
I also should point out that many full time or tenured professors (not saying your prof is one of them) are very comfortable in their lofty, tenured status and tend to avoid noticing the unwashed masses (the part-time adjuncts) wandering the halls of academia. Makes them feel guilty for receiving such disproportionately high salaries and benefits in comparison to the adjuncts. It's like not acknowledging the guy who's cleaning the crap out of your septic tank. You need him, but you don't want to give him a hug.
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