<p>How do the odds look if I want to be a professor in the sciences in the future? will there be more or less openings?</p>
<p>As a future humanities professor aspirant, I say go with the flow. If you want to be a professor just because you want to have a decent salary or life style, do something else. Your research will not matter anything to the majority of the society, and majority of the people outside your field will not understand what the heck you have been doing. </p>
<p>The job market is pretty bleak. A professorate is often reserved for the most tenacious of all cockroaches that live with graduate students in their cramped apartments on a below minimum, say, wage.</p>
<p>very very very low</p>
<p>Oh, c’mon! Science professor? Of course- if you are good and get your PhD from a top university in your field and pay your research dues. Get your degrees from any-U-that-will-have-you, get lackluster grades, do no research- and maybe you can teach high school. Or, get a job in big industry. But, what science? It’s broad.</p>
<p>i would like to teach at the college level someday, so i skimmed a couple issues of academia magazine to find out where the jobs are. Here is what I gleaned:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>STEM majors definitely have the advantage over humanities majors when it comes to finding tenure-track jobs. </p></li>
<li><p>Tenure-track jobs at major research universities are highly competitive. </p></li>
<li><p>It helps to have published/done research <em>before</em> getting into a PhD program. </p></li>
<li><p>There are colleges that focus more on teaching than research, and are less competitive. If teaching is your goal, this might be something to think about.</p></li>
<li><p>Overall, many people in the STEM fields abandon academia for better-paying jobs in industries like biotech, high tech, engineering, energy companies, etc.</p></li>
<li><p>The overall trend in academia is to save money by offering less tenure-track positions and rely on adjunct faculty, who are often treated as less-than their peers, even though they have the same education!</p></li>
<li><p>That said, any STEM field has the potential to be very financially and intellectually rewarding!!</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Hope this helps and good luck!!</p>