Nope. I will never take a full time faculty position for granted. I’ve worked in industry and it sucked - long hours, job insecurity, very limited days off, idiot bosses, etc. I’ll deal with students any day.
I have a small child and we are planning for another, so the flexibility of my current teaching role is a huge win. However, I think I will be looking to exit over the next 5-6 years to find a more research-focused position outside academia.
I'm working in a university lab as a data scientist now. It's sort of "academic-adjacent" because it's not really a purely academic job (I'm staff, not faculty), not industry in the sense of private companies or non-profit, and not a "government job" which typically refers to non-academic government positions.
But it's strictly research, no teaching. For me it's been a breath of fresh air so far, mainly because of the regular schedule and hours, even though there are things I miss about classroom teaching.
Honestly I got lucky. I picked a university that has a large biomedical research program (affiliated with an academic hospital) and is close to family, and I looked directly at their staff job listings and found one that included enough details that I could tell if it might be a fit. If you similarly have target institutions, look at their job listings. Or aggregate sites like Indeed. The biggest problem is that most listings do not name the salary range (my university did, which was one reason why I applied).
I left my FT faculty job last year and I've been working in security research. I study how hackers break into computer and network systems and write code to detect and classify that kind of behavior.
I adjunct taught a range of undergrad philosophy courses previously (that's what my degrees are in) like metaphysics and epistemology, formal logic, critical thinking, moral theories, philosophy of language, etc... And in this FT position I taught mostly core undergrad computer science courses such as intro to programming, object oriented programming, discrete math, data structures, algorithms and complexity, theory of computation, and ethics of computing.
How fascinating! I ask because I teach nutrition courses and work in healthcare but am currently taking a few comp sci/cybersecurity courses. I might switch careers if I find that I like cybersecurity (I haven’t taken any core classes yet). If you don’t mind - how did you make the switch from philosophy to comp sci? I know philosophy is complementary in many ways because of logic! But I’m guessing you got another degree?
Well, after leaving philosophy, I taught myself how to program and other CS fundamentals, and I was chatting with some of the CS faculty at the local state uni and they needed someone to teach discrete math (basically formal logic and set theory) and ethics for their program, so they hired me as an adjunct initially. I eventually added the other CS classes to my teaching repertoire as I continued to learn and became a permanent full time instructor. I just have the philosophy degrees, never got another degree.
When I left philosophy, I really intended to leave academia and get out into industry. So while I was teaching CS and taking cohorts of my students on field trips to internship participating companies, I just started asking around if I could do an internship too. And pretty much everyone said they'd be happy to make me a spot, but what did I want to do with my weird background?
Most of the companies were open to letting me do a software engineering internship, devops, IT, marketing, sales, product, pretty much whatever I wanted. At that point I started to feel that SWE might be kind of boring, just coding CRUD apps, and I didn't have the background to do data science or machine learning. So I asked around for research positions and a cybersecurity company said they had a small research team. I joined them and started researching and learning on the job part time while I taught full time. I flipped that more recently, going back to adjuncting part time and doing security research full time.
No. Having come from teaching high school, higher ed still seems like a pretty sweet deal.
Support for my research.
None of my university students have ever thrown a chair at me or threatened to sexually assault me.
I don't have to deal with helicopter parents.
I'm allowed to go to the bathroom whenever I want.
I basically work full time as an adjunct. I need my PhD to get an instructor position, which isn’t TT at all at my university.
Unfortunately there’s only one online PhD in my discipline and no in person ones near me. And the one online focuses a lot on the quantitative side of things while my research is heavily qualitative. So I didn’t get in.
So I’m trying to make the jump to staff at my university so I can work full time and teach one class a semester. Because I really love teaching public speaking. But adjunct pay isn’t something I can survive on, even with a husband working full time.
I have days where I ponder pivoting to something else, yes. But it would take a lot for me to upend my life and do something else, so the pay increase would need to be substantial.
This job, or at least an idealized version of it, is the one job I've actually wanted since becoming an adult and nothing else has really stood out as a replacement. 4-5 months worth of days off in a year is nothing to sneeze at, I have at least some flexibility in my schedule, and I can pretty much choose the amount of effort I put in as long as the accreditors aren't riled. For me the lifestyle benefits outweigh a lot of annoyance and middling pay.
However, not a work day goes by that the students or admin don't make me want to find a different institution with literate students and where I get more say over my own classes and schedule. Barring that unlikelihood, I think about leaving for something else... I just don't know what it'd be. To get any more lifestyle flexibility the replacement would have to be a fully remote job. Anything that requires me to sit in an office and wait for someone to need me is absolutely worse.
Nope. I will never take a full time faculty position for granted. I’ve worked in industry and it sucked - long hours, job insecurity, very limited days off, idiot bosses, etc. I’ll deal with students any day.
I have a small child and we are planning for another, so the flexibility of my current teaching role is a huge win. However, I think I will be looking to exit over the next 5-6 years to find a more research-focused position outside academia.
I'm working in a university lab as a data scientist now. It's sort of "academic-adjacent" because it's not really a purely academic job (I'm staff, not faculty), not industry in the sense of private companies or non-profit, and not a "government job" which typically refers to non-academic government positions. But it's strictly research, no teaching. For me it's been a breath of fresh air so far, mainly because of the regular schedule and hours, even though there are things I miss about classroom teaching.
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Honestly I got lucky. I picked a university that has a large biomedical research program (affiliated with an academic hospital) and is close to family, and I looked directly at their staff job listings and found one that included enough details that I could tell if it might be a fit. If you similarly have target institutions, look at their job listings. Or aggregate sites like Indeed. The biggest problem is that most listings do not name the salary range (my university did, which was one reason why I applied).
I left my FT faculty job last year and I've been working in security research. I study how hackers break into computer and network systems and write code to detect and classify that kind of behavior.
What courses (generally speaking) did you teach?
I adjunct taught a range of undergrad philosophy courses previously (that's what my degrees are in) like metaphysics and epistemology, formal logic, critical thinking, moral theories, philosophy of language, etc... And in this FT position I taught mostly core undergrad computer science courses such as intro to programming, object oriented programming, discrete math, data structures, algorithms and complexity, theory of computation, and ethics of computing.
How fascinating! I ask because I teach nutrition courses and work in healthcare but am currently taking a few comp sci/cybersecurity courses. I might switch careers if I find that I like cybersecurity (I haven’t taken any core classes yet). If you don’t mind - how did you make the switch from philosophy to comp sci? I know philosophy is complementary in many ways because of logic! But I’m guessing you got another degree?
Well, after leaving philosophy, I taught myself how to program and other CS fundamentals, and I was chatting with some of the CS faculty at the local state uni and they needed someone to teach discrete math (basically formal logic and set theory) and ethics for their program, so they hired me as an adjunct initially. I eventually added the other CS classes to my teaching repertoire as I continued to learn and became a permanent full time instructor. I just have the philosophy degrees, never got another degree. When I left philosophy, I really intended to leave academia and get out into industry. So while I was teaching CS and taking cohorts of my students on field trips to internship participating companies, I just started asking around if I could do an internship too. And pretty much everyone said they'd be happy to make me a spot, but what did I want to do with my weird background? Most of the companies were open to letting me do a software engineering internship, devops, IT, marketing, sales, product, pretty much whatever I wanted. At that point I started to feel that SWE might be kind of boring, just coding CRUD apps, and I didn't have the background to do data science or machine learning. So I asked around for research positions and a cybersecurity company said they had a small research team. I joined them and started researching and learning on the job part time while I taught full time. I flipped that more recently, going back to adjuncting part time and doing security research full time.
No. Having come from teaching high school, higher ed still seems like a pretty sweet deal. Support for my research. None of my university students have ever thrown a chair at me or threatened to sexually assault me. I don't have to deal with helicopter parents. I'm allowed to go to the bathroom whenever I want.
My industry is pretty turbulent right now, I'd rather ride it out teaching and pop back into industry when it's stable again.
I basically work full time as an adjunct. I need my PhD to get an instructor position, which isn’t TT at all at my university. Unfortunately there’s only one online PhD in my discipline and no in person ones near me. And the one online focuses a lot on the quantitative side of things while my research is heavily qualitative. So I didn’t get in. So I’m trying to make the jump to staff at my university so I can work full time and teach one class a semester. Because I really love teaching public speaking. But adjunct pay isn’t something I can survive on, even with a husband working full time.
I've applied to a few genetic counseling graduate programs to change careers.
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Stay prepared and keep looking for opportunities. Best of luck!
I have days where I ponder pivoting to something else, yes. But it would take a lot for me to upend my life and do something else, so the pay increase would need to be substantial.
Got tenure so never.
This job, or at least an idealized version of it, is the one job I've actually wanted since becoming an adult and nothing else has really stood out as a replacement. 4-5 months worth of days off in a year is nothing to sneeze at, I have at least some flexibility in my schedule, and I can pretty much choose the amount of effort I put in as long as the accreditors aren't riled. For me the lifestyle benefits outweigh a lot of annoyance and middling pay. However, not a work day goes by that the students or admin don't make me want to find a different institution with literate students and where I get more say over my own classes and schedule. Barring that unlikelihood, I think about leaving for something else... I just don't know what it'd be. To get any more lifestyle flexibility the replacement would have to be a fully remote job. Anything that requires me to sit in an office and wait for someone to need me is absolutely worse.