<p>Profs are never hired on as full professors - that typically takes 12-15 years - but they also aren’t always hired a lecturers or adjuncts first, either, especially in the biomedical sciences. In traditional fields, the entry point is usually an assistant professor position, and in many fields this is still the most common start for new professors. Full-time tenure-track professors can start anywhere from $35K to $75K depending on their university and its location, and their field. In the biomedical sciences, you’re much more likely to start on the higher end of that, especially if you are bringing in grant funding.</p>
<p>It’s also important to note that there is a byzantine system of other designations that you can have if you are a professor in the biomedical sciences. You can be a clinical professor, in which you mostly teach clinical courses and do a lot of research; you can be a research professor, which teaches no classes and mostly does research. There are a lot of people who are in permanent assistant research professor positions who stay there for years and years; they never teach a class, or teach one only occasionally. Sometimes they are soft money and their salary and position is contingent upon grant funding that they or their lab brings in.</p>
<p>But none of this is possible without a PhD, so if you want to go the academic research route, aim for a PhD. I’d suggest applying primarily to PhD programs but also applying to a few high-ranked MS programs just in case you aren’t admitted to a PhD program.</p>
<p>At my university you don’t have to be a big name to make $100K; I think the new assistant professors around here in the medical sciences make around $80K, so associates are surely making $100K. (I’m actually up at the medical center.) Actually, the median salary for all assistant professors at my university is $99,000; for associates, it’s $125,000, and for full professors it’s $197,000. I know there are professors here who make far more than that. But I go to a prestigious university in a high-cost area of living, and the AAUP survey admits that these salaries are in the 96th-99th percentile.</p>