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Comment by seibelj | Hacker News Reader

You complain that pay is too low compared to the private sector… why not work in the private sector then? Unless there is a reason why you prefer teaching to business? In which case the pay cut is logical.

Comparisons of totally alien industries (non-profit academia to for-profit tech startups) don’t make any sense because everything about them is overwhelmingly different.

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The author did work in the private sector, then went to academia and tried to make it work, and now went back to private. They clearly laid out why without much complaining.

My take is that Pamela is championing for higher pay for Unit-18 faculty. $107k sounds like a lot of money until they break it down. And these are the folks prepping the future generation of our field. Pay them more.

107k sounds really high actually.

The salaries shouldn’t be compared with private, but should be compared with other non faculty salaries within the UC system, or across universities in the world.

A faculty in London, Paris, or other high CoL city would love a pay boost to 107k.

London and Paris are low CoL relative to the Bay Area.

Not really. London is not much less expensive, and I’m not familiar with Paris but it seems roughly as expensive as London at a glance. The big difference is many costs, especially for young families, are socialized in those two places. For example, health insurance.

Some background: the post was written as a retrospective, and the poster did leave their job after 1.5 years. This post enumerates why, which is helpful documentation.

They're competing for the same staff (clearly since the author has decided to return to industry), so why wouldn't you compare their pay?

There is a real reason for that: no-one works an adjunct because they want to stay an adjunct (or, at least, I've never heard of that). You work as an adjunct because you want to stay on the academic path while you angle for a tenure-track position.

However, since the supply of PhD students grossly outnumbers the number of tenure-track positions, people do end up in some kind of limbo (post-docs, non-track lecturer or adjunct positions) for a long time.

The tenured positions also don't pay as well as industry but they come with much greater freedom, more flexible balance of research vs. teaching vs. service and incredibly robust job security.

That's really not quite true. There are thousands of lecturers in the UC system, and many thousands more where it is a career choice. Because tenure track is simply just not possible at many places, especially if you want to teach and do not want to do, or do not have a research background. The UC system especially has a career progression for lecturers, though it is somewhat challenging to make it through.

> Unless there is a reason why you prefer teaching to business? In which case the pay cut is logical.

Why is it logical? I'm not saying teaching should match private sector. But if the pay is too low, how are we going to get passionate and talented people who actually want to teach?

Agree. Academic lecturing jobs tend to be super family friendly with on-site childcare, generous lunch breaks, and almost no work travel.

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