I want to get a PhD in computer science and eventually become a professor, but after doing some research, the Internet (I know, great source for this kind of stuff) has basically been unanimous when it comes to this topic: if you get a PhD in the hopes of becoming a professor, you’re delusional and naive and once you do you’ll never find a job and you’ll spend your whole life trying to please some pompous admission committee and you’ll end up poor and depressed and stressed out and you’ll die alone. In short, they almost overwhelmingly recommend against it. Now, I know that there are cons to everything, but I think that for me the pros will outweigh them. I want to follow this career path because I’m more interested in academic subjects than anything, I excel in school and can pick things up relatively quickly, and I’ve always been liked to investigate things further. I’m also aware of the cons: not nearly as much money as industry, it’s hard work, there’s lots of politics, etc. But I think I can deal with all of that as long as I’m actually employed after I graduate. So before I ask you what my chances of employment actually are, let’s make some assumptions (or wishful thinking) first: I went to a respectable public school for my undergrad (not a top 20, but something like Purdue or a SUNY) where I engaged in some basic research, I did my PhD at a top CS university (Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, Caltech, something along those lines) where I’ve done some pretty intense and extensive research and I have several respected academics in my field who are willing to testify to my brilliance and depth/breadth of knowledge (again, just assuming here). What, then, are my chances of getting a job? Is it still a crapshoot? Is it still hopeless? Am I still wasting my time?
Getting a TENURED position is getting harder and harder as colleges know the can rely on cheap adjunct professors.
Also many people have lofty ideas of where they’ll get a position, when they’re more likely to end up at Podunk State U.
So let’s switch my question to specify that I want a tenure position. Then what?
It is tough, but I am going to say that CS is slightly easier than some other fields. Many of their grads are drawn off by so many job opportunities and good pay in the field. And you won’t be unemployable if you fail in your quest to get a tenured position.
You mean tenure track? It depends upon the demand for your field/specialty when you graduate. Even if you land a tenure track position, you may not end up getting tenure. It is very tough in general to get a tenure track position, but I don’t think it’s necessarily quite as dire as what people have been telling you. It also depends upon how flexible you are as to institution and location.
" if you get a PhD in the hopes of becoming a professor, you’re delusional and naive and once you do you’ll never find a job and you’ll spend your whole life trying to please some pompous admission committee and you’ll end up poor and depressed and stressed out and you’ll die alone"
Let’s face it. People with CS degrees (especially PhDs) are not breaking down doors to enter academics. If you were talking about biology, then I"d understand. If you were talking about neuroscience or psychology I’d understand. But Computer Science? If you have the skills and aptitude, and if you end up liking research, then it is certainly a very reasonable career choice but lower paid than your other options will be.
The average Full Professor salary at Purdue is only 132k. This is after you’ve spent a chunk of your life working your way up from Assistant Prof, then Associate Prof, not to mention the years of lost income potential making peanuts as a grad student.
With a degree in CS, you’d got to absolutely love being in academia to work for that.
Each faculty member at a research university supervises dozens of graduate students to PhD completion over his/her career. This is obviously dozens of times as many PhD graduates as needed to replace him/her when s/he retires.
Obviously, not all go on to tenure track faculty jobs at research universities (since there are other colleges, and industry in the case of CS). But the numbers are not favorable to becoming a tenure track faculty member at a college.
But they are better for a CS major than most other majors, and the OP will have a very marketable skill if they wash out or decide not to work in academia. I think it is a lower risk proposition than most other PhD paths.
It the OP has the motivation and aptitude there is no reason to discourage the goal. It is a very reachable one.
Given that most CS PhDs appear to want to work in industry and that computer science is a growing field that increasing numbers of people want to learn, an academic career in computer science logically should be reachable for the development scenario you sketched. (But be prepared to work at a community college or otherwise not illustrious college or even in an online teaching program.)
We look to be on a course of about two CS PhDs being awarded for every postsecondary teaching job opening over the next ten years, judging from the number and the trend in number of these PhDs being awarded recently (http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2015/nsf15321/pdf/tab10.pdf) and what the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts (http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_102.htm). (The ratio is roughly 4 for biology and 1 for mathematics.)
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2014/07/employment_rates_for_stem_ph_d_s_it_s_a_stagnant_job_market_for_young_scientists.html) shows the immediate (year of graduation) job status of CS PhDs to be decidedly better than that of PhDs in life sciences, chemistry, physics, math and even engineering. Among these, CS is highest in level of employment and lowest in level of post doctoral appointments in 2012 and generally through 1992-2012. Postdocs suggest difficulty in getting permanent employment. The general gloom about the worth of a PhD will have been largely driven by the experience of people in the fields with lower doctoral prospects than CS.
I don’t find it reasonable to vex over whether you have tenure - very few jobs in the whole job market have any such thing.
It should be quite good enough to earn $50,000/year. (I’ve been happy many years on far less than that.) It’s well worth forgoing a greater amount to be doing what you especially enjoy.
In addition to what others have said, I’d like to add that academia is a strange animal. Some academics have spent their entire lives focusing on their research and teaching, while others spent substantial time in industry before jumping into academia. If you choose to get a PhD in CS, you will be exceptionally employable - unlike some PhD studies, which have little discernible value in private industry, computer science PhDs have a TON of value in the private and public sector.
From what I’ve seen, a decent number of brilliant CS PhDs make switches between industry and academia throughout their careers. For example, I had a job recently at a highly profitable company that actively sought CS PhDs to help develop proprietary algorithms to help clients. These PhD employees sometimes came from university research positions, drawn by the allure of doubling or tripling their salaries; meanwhile, some employees left the company to go into academic pursuits after they found specific research studies that would require effort beyond what a client would be willing to pay for.
Your plan isn’t bad at all: if you love computer science, then you will enjoy your course of study; if you change your mind about your career choice, you will be abnormally well-prepared to make that pivot without a ton of sacrifice!