How much do Poli Sci professors get paid?

[rustytrix]

I was just wondering much do poli sci professors get paid, on average, at top 25 or so schools. I am sure these numbers will vary from person to person and from university to university but if anybody has a general idea then please enlighten us.

thanks.

[IRHopeful]

This link should help answer your question (although it's not for poli-sci in particular):

http://chronicle.com/stats/aaup/

[dysmetria]

Depends on position (assistant, associate, full / TT or not) and type of school (R1 or LAC/ public, private) and other factors (prestige, recruitment, ability to pull in NSF funding, etc.) For all public schools, base salaries are usually public information. There is wide variation.

I don't know the origin of your question, but if you are trying to figure out if this is lucrative work, the answer is definitely NO. Very few PhDs in any field, with few exceptions, can recover the opportunity costs of spending 5+ years in a PhD program. I recently did my own calculation and estimate mine at a quarter of a million dollars, undiscounted. And I have a fully funded fellowship.

[Wesson]

There are lots of points to note about political science salaries. In no particular order:

1. Entry-level salaries rise the fastest. Therefore, someone starting graduate school now can expect to do quite a lot better 6-8 years down the road than the 2009 cohort. As a rough guide, I'd say add $1,000 to $2,000 per additional year.

2. Most salaries are for the nine-month academic year. You often can supplement those with summer funding from grants, or "summer ninths" from your department, especially early in your career.

3. Most universities have pretty good retirement systems, which works out to added, tax-deferred pay. It's pretty common to have the university kick in an extra 8-12% over your salary, with that money put directly into mutual funds. And you can match it, again tax-deferred, from your salary.

4. Starting salaries do vary quite a lot by type of institution. This year, the very worst one probably would do for a tenure-track offer would be in the low 40s, and the very best could well approach 100k. A top 25 Ph.D. program in an affordable community (places like some of the Big Ten schools) would start assistants at around 70k this year. Lower-ranked Ph.D. programs in similar locales would be more in the range of 55-65.

5. You typically get some small pay raise each year, and raises of about 10% with tenure and promotion to associate, and again with promotion to full.

6. The way to get large raises (25-50%) is to remain marketable, and to draw offers from other universities.

7. Many tenured faculty, and especially full professors and endowed chairs, at top 25 programs are paid nine-month salaries over $100,000, and some are up over $200,000 (especially ones in areas with high costs of living, and ones who have had multiple outside offers).

8. One can earn small amounts of extra money by reviewing manuscripts for publishers ($200 is pretty common), and by publishing books. For a research-oriented book, you typically won't make much; $2,000 is a good showing. Textbooks can earn you much more, especially if they catch on. However, textbooks earn you zero scholarly credit, so they won't get you pay raises.

[rustytrix]

Depends on position (assistant, associate, full / TT or not) and type of school (R1 or LAC/ public, private) and other factors (prestige, recruitment, ability to pull in NSF funding, etc.) For all public schools, base salaries are usually public information. There is wide variation.

I don't know the origin of your question, but if you are trying to figure out if this is lucrative work, the answer is definitely NO. Very few PhDs in any field, with few exceptions, can recover the opportunity costs of spending 5+ years in a PhD program. I recently did my own calculation and estimate mine at a quarter of a million dollars, undiscounted. And I have a fully funded fellowship.

nah im not worried about it being lucrative or not..im doing it either way .. i was just wonderin

[BrunoPuntzJones]

There's an actually fairly useful thread on PSJR on this...AP Starting Salaries or something like that.

I went on the market a couple years ago and had four offers -- all in the South (two top 50 R1s/PhD programs -- another had a masters program). Two of the offers were in the mid-50's, one in the upper 50's and one in the mid-60's. Given the costs of living in those areas, I was pretty pleased with all of them. I probably could have negotiated more on the salary for the offer I did take (or for a summer ninth), but instead used most of my leverage on an additional course break.

[seraphita]

Adjunct professors get paid about 2-3,000 per class.