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Comment by PaulHoule | Hacker News Reader

Tenure track professors get paid pretty well, adjuncts get paid like Scientology staff.

The example he used in that article was an adjunct making $15k and a professor making $60k.

If that $60k is actually his salary, that's not great. Now, if one of the other commenters is right and he's at UT Arlington, $60k is a perfectly liveable income here, but any professional job with more than a few years experience is going to surpass that. As a software engineer in the same metropolitan area with about 6 years experience, I make $66k/year. I'm not even that good, and I'm probably younger than him.

60K for an assistant professor in history sounds about right. Pretty much any assistant professor position in the humanities is going to have a starting salary at that level or less in a not highly ranked university.

Varies wildly depending on field even within an institution, and is still only for 9 months of the year (pay for the summer either with grants, consulting, or by teaching summer school classes [if there are any]).

While a historian (like the author) might not get paid summer salary, this is not generalizable.

My professors in the astronomy department at my university (a large state school) don't get paid over the summer either.

It very much depends on the department. For example, most NSF & State supported departments (like astronomy) draw a 9-month salary. Many if not most NIH funded positions, like those in medical schools or schools of public health, are 12-month positions. There are lots of those positions, they're just somewhat less visible.

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