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Comment by dgfitz | Hacker News Reader

You keep bringing up one state in the union as if the whole system is flawed because of this one state.

Picking a state that's not California nor New York, Massachusetts, etc.: https://www.indeed.com/career/assistant-professor/salaries/A...

Says $60,000 for University of Arkansas or 2/3rd of what was listed for California.

I'm not an academic nor do I live in California (or Arkansas) but $90,000/year after 6 years working below minimum wage and 6 years barely above doesn't sound that great in <economic terms>. Hopefully people are getting benefits from teaching or research.

$60K is very hard to believe. I wouldn't trust indeed.com for faculty salaries.

For one thing, the variance is high between departments. Engineering gets paid a lot more than history, for example.

According to https://www.univstats.com/salary/university-of-arkansas/facu..., assistant professor is $91K. The caveats still apply - some likely get a lot more, and some a lot less.

Fortunately, it's a public university, so we can see actual salaries:

https://app.powerbi.com/view?r=eyJrIjoiZGM3Yzg2YzMtNDY3YS00N...

Looking at some random assistant professors in relevant departments, I see:

One who earns $113K

Another who earns $94K

Another who earns $96K.

These are regular departments, (biochemistry, biology, etc). Not medical departments. I'm sure those ones get paid more (e.g. one I personally knew in Houston got $180K in a public university in Dallas).

So mid $90's would be my guess.

Then note that these are 9 month salaries, and the typical deal is they get up to a third more from grants (their "summer" salary). So total compensation for assistant professors would be about $120K.

Faculty salaries are not that bad, as a rule. What's really bad is the number of years they spend trying to get a postdoc.

for biomedical, it is what your grant stipulates. I.e. I think way back when, K23's paid $98k for 75% time (or maybe 70%) and your institution agreed to pay the rest. Sometimes, they would actually pay you more to try and get close to fair market value, but that is if the department is generous. For famous institutions, like UCLA, or Brigham and Women's, the law of supply and demand is not on your side bc if you don't like the low salary, there's a giant line of wannabes waiting to take your spot.

You mean hire one or get one?

Are you sure that those are 9 month salaries?

Fairly certain. It's also in line with salaries I know from other departments. This is the "fixed" amount of the salary. The grant portion is variable, and also not paid by the state, so it's usually not required by the law to disclose.

Published historical pay will be 12 month salaries. Most non tenured professors will refuse the optional summer salary and work all summer for free, because they have to pay for it from their own grants- it means hiring one less student, and less chance of getting tenure.

Except that is where the majority of research is done, where the prestigious schools and students are, and where those people want to live. Plenty of good research gets done in Arkansas, and Texas, and North Carolina, but not in the cheap parts. It happens in Research Triangle, or Austin, or Fayetteville. It doesn't happen at Oachita Baptist College in Arkadelphia.

The somewhat good news is that people get into science and medicine because they believe in them, and they're often willing to work for peanuts so that big pharma can take their work and charge Medicare $80k/yr for a new drug that might work.

There's huge problems in academia and it's incentive structure, but I don't think they're related to be being in urban vs rural America (they exist just as badly in Europe, China, and India)

it also depends on the lab.

It's a very small world for various reasons and sometimes, there's a good combination between a PI and a hosting institution. Sometimes there's not. If the guy who's doing what you want to do has his lab at UAB, you go to UAB. That being said, once you get your K23 or R01, because of NIH matching funds, you have more of a choice of where you go.

Those places you list have gone up painfully in a relative sense (like everywhere lately) but are nothing like the absurdity of California. You don't need two highly-paid professional incomes to afford a house with a long commute. There's also Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Chicago, central Florida, many others.

That one state is where the apex of the system is. It's where a lot of, maybe most, research happens, it's where perhaps most tech development happens, it's even where a lot of our popular culture is determined. It's where ~everyone is aiming for, even if only a fraction of them will make it there, so it affects the whole system.

All that given, most people still live on the East coast, as in 80% past Nevada. Culture is arguable.

For Americans, there is a clear difference between what behavior might be normal in the bay area/silicon valley all the way to LA than it is for NY, Boston, Houston, Miami, Detroit, etc.

I'd even assert "most tech development" is just plain wrong. It's certainly where many companies are HQ'd, but those same companies have offices all over the states, and each one offers/specializes in different products.

It also depends on what you mean by "tech development" of course. R&D projects and new developments, maybe there's an edge. I have a much stronger feeling that more research is performed in the Boston -> DC metropolis than the equivalent (as in distance) metropolis spanning from LA -> Silicon Valley.

You sincerely believe this?

I was contextualizing my response because cost of living is higher in California, and some of those numbers may seem more reasonable if it were in Arkansas, for example.

I think NIH does a cost of living adjustment.

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