Salaries of Professors in SG

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Sorry to bump up this thread, but does anyone know what the average salarly for an Social Sciences Professor is? Thanks!

Well, the pay scale really depends on your ability, experience and the spectrum of tasks you take on. Some profs only teach, they earn less than profs that both teach and do research. But the average prof earns about 5-6k with experience.

[chase78]

I was just reading. Well it is not easy to be an academic. A lot depends on the university's focus. If it is research in a competitive field, and you do not publish into top journals... then you will not get tenure. After that, where will you go? Australia universities?

Some areas are easier, for example a practitioner focused course. Then you can publish in the 2nd to 3rd tier journal.

If you are on teaching track, it is less glamourous but less stressful.

Typically, depending on the University. less than half of PHD students, get employed as Asst Professors.

A professor needs to be perfect. Good soft skills, good networking skills (to get your paper published), good teaching, good listener, good motivator, good time management, good research skills, ability to think out of box for research...

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Well, the pay scale really depends on your ability, experience and the spectrum of tasks you take on. Some profs only teach, they earn less than profs that both teach and do research. But the average prof earns about 5-6k with experience.

this is totally inaccurate. here is a more equitable rate.

Asst Profs (Pre-tenure) - ~ 80-130k PA
Assoc Prof/Prof (Tenured) - ~ > 200k PA

just to note:

this includes bonuses
this excludes housing allowance that is provided for by the universities
4 local Autonomous Unis do not pay for education of offspring
relocation allowance is one-off
only 30% of asst profs make tenure after 6-8 years. those who fail are given one year "transition" to leave the university and find another job

Originally Posted by Unregistered

this is totally inaccurate. here is a more equitable rate.

Asst Profs (Pre-tenure) - ~ 80-130k PA
Assoc Prof/Prof (Tenured) - ~ > 200k PA

just to note:

this includes bonuses
this excludes housing allowance that is provided for by the universities
4 local Autonomous Unis do not pay for education of offspring
relocation allowance is one-off
only 30% of asst profs make tenure after 6-8 years. those who fail are given one year "transition" to leave the university and find another job

Only 30%? Any source to verify these claims? Thanks!

[lordlad]

Originally Posted by Donny

All right, fair enough. Somewhat do agree with what you said.

I guess it goes down to the level of understanding each candidate can bring to the job. I don't deny that those Vietnamese programmers you hire can get some jobs yet.

Yet, I feel that a Stanford PhD (since that is what the OP is aiming at) can bring in new knowledge that produces a about a better solution viz-a-viz those done by the programmers you mentioned.

Right of the top of my head and I'm not trying to show off or be verbose here:

1. Parallel programming on a GPU (undergrad would at best take a single course on GPU programming. PhDs develop and understand better the theory)

2. Machine Learning for signal detection (a PhD would throughout the course of his thesis applied machine learning to numerous problems. An undergrad probably just learnt PCM* and did a two week project on it)

3. Use of appropriate algorithms (perhaps here the PhD and undergrad can be on par. Nonetheless, doing and using algorithms for two years compared to two semesters inevitably suggest more familiarity with it for the PhD than the undergrad)

My point is that a bachelors degree equips one with fundamental knowledge, a PhD with specific knowledge in a specific area. Depending on the job, sometimes both the bachelors and PhD survive, sometimes only the PhD survives. I can trust a Vietnamese programmer to write a multithreaded console program to read and display text from a server to a screen. I won't trust a Vietnamese programmer with at most one year of experience, to tear up a Linux kernel and write a customer memory manager taken from some IBM publication written in the 1980s. (I've seen some of those, they scare the freak out of me.)

*Principle Component Analysis

GPGPU (or GPU Compute) is still a relative 'young' industry (at least in its application).....Companies like Nvidia are currently doing it and pushing it though with their Nvidia GPU based server racks...its application probably more for data crunching, catastrophic financial modeling.

The need for that is still young in the industry at the moment but as it's still emerging, i do feel it's good to start now.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I think should be more. i already earn almost 100k annually. And i'm teaching at poly.

Really, what do you teach in Poly? May I know which poly?
As I know, the teacher earns only 4k-5k per month in poly.

[mangos47]

I've had master student who went on to pursue PhD or do postdoc in US/UK etc. and come back start assist.prof career. It is in fact not that difficult since local Universities also want to have more Singaporean-born professors to balance the team (lots of Chinese/Indian professor hired in last two decades so the ratio of local was kinda of a problem)

I'd say study hard and aim for a top PhD program in US/UK early on is a good strategy. You can focus more on theoretical research and publications if doing academia is your ultimate goal.

Pay-wise I know fresh PhD from US top schools join NUS and get 120k/year. My professor who has been with NUS ECE for 25 years when I was in school draws about 250k/year and prabably more now. It also depends on faculty. CS professor maybe similar to engineering. Business and law tends to make more especially if got consultation side-job. Medicine and dental professors are usually also practicing in NUS as well and their pay is way higher.

But being a professor the first 5-10 years is not easy. Getting funding and generating publication to earn tenure is no easy task for young graduates.

[mangos47]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

anyone know how much adjunct faculty paid?
in
NUS
NTU
SMU
Polys
ITE
SIT

I have colleagues being adjunct faculty in NUS, and they are NOT getting paid. It is for free, but you build up some experience and connection which later can help you secure a regular academic position. I don't know for other schools.

[mangos47]

Originally Posted by Henney

my 2 cents about the professor profession.

It seems a pretty good life if you love doing research and are committed to academic type of work. A close assistant professor from university of michigan of mine only meets his boss once or twice a year. The objective of the annual meeting is to receive compliment from his Boss "great job you did!" Other than that, the whole entire year you work on your own research and present at annual marketing..finance.. operations conferences.. depending on what field you are in.. you get to stay at nice hotels and meet smart people..

he's paid 15k per month only 32 years old. damn.

US universities pay 9-months usually and the rest depends on funding that the professor can find. Actually professors' pay in Singapore is higher than that in US in average. More so considering the much lower tax here.

[mangos47]

Originally Posted by chase78

A professor needs to be perfect. Good soft skills, good networking skills (to get your paper published), good teaching, good listener, good motivator, good time management, good research skills, ability to think out of box for research...

This is not true. In fact a lots of people choose professor to be away from politics and networking that they not good at - the old saying of hiding in the ivory tower. Professor largely get promoted and paid for their research works. I don't know where you get the impression that networking get publication. For some 'junk' conferences which nowadays is mainly for socializing in the first place, maybe. For decent journal papers and some high-impact conferences, it is always anonymously peer-reviewed and people have connection with the authors usually avoid taking up the review job. And for tenure evaluation, it is almost always the later type of publication that counts.