<p>There’s no money in research?</p>
<p>The average annual salary for assistant professors (untenured professors in their first 6 years) at my university, Columbia, is $89,000/year. At Emory, with a lower cost of living, it’s $84,000 a year. At Georgia State, it’s $65,000/year, which is a lot less but still a good starting salary. At GSU for associate professors it’s $77,000/year, and for full professors it’s $121,000 a year (although full professors who are women can expect to make nearly $20,000 less per year). At Emory associate professors make an average of $100,500 a year.</p>
<p>Even if you worked at a lower-tier university - like Clayton State University in Georgia - you could expect to make $54,000 as an assistant professor, $64,000 as an associate professor and $83,000 as a full professor. At SUNY-Binghamton, those levels are $70K/$84.5K/$115K.</p>
<p>If you were to do government research, that’s even better. A military researcher can expect to make $85,000 during their first year of employment (including all base pay, housing and subsitence allowances, special pay, bonuses, and tax benefits). Researchers for the federal government can expect around a $70,000 salary their first year at the appropriate GS level. Researchers at private firms and nonprofits can make more or less depending on their level and the prestige at the firm, but all in all they can probably expect at least $55,000 their first year and some think tanks pay rates comparable to the government firms.</p>
<p>Researchers don’t make banker money or even physician money, but they can make a solid upper-middle-class salary.</p>
<p>Besides, it’s not like your only choices with psychology are either research or therapy. Psychology is a major that can be parlayed into a wide variety of areas, provided that you have the know-how to spin your knowledge into what employers want. I was using my psychology knowledge to interview for management consulting firms before I decided to go to graduate school. They liked that my psychology major taught me how to perform research, think analytically, solve problems using scientific and investigative methods, observe and analyze individual and group behavior, and write well.</p>