Life as a Professor

Almost everyone has been exposed to what professors do in the classroom--they teach. However, teaching is only one aspect of a professor's career. One of the attractive parts of being a professor is that in addition to teaching, you get to do a lot of other enjoyable activities. The purpose of this page is to discuss the many different things professors do.

Life as a Professor - an Overview

One of the draws of being a college professor is that professors get to do a lot of different activities on a regular basis. During the year, a professor will teach classes, conduct research, attend accounting conferences, review others' research, mentor students, serve on university/college/department committees, and interact with professionals/regulators/standard setters. The diversity of the activities makes the job exciting and stimulating. It is easy to avoid getting stuck in a rut because you get to do lots of different things.

The exact mix of what you do depends on the institution where you work, the stage of your career, and your personal interests. An additional benefitt of being a professor is the flexibility your job affords you, not only flexibility in types of activities but within an activity, flexibility in what you do. Being a professor is unique in that you get to learn and investigate issues and topics that you find interesting. There is relatively no structure put on the topics that you can research and learn about. For example, as a professor you get to decide what types of questions you will research, what you teach (to some degree), and what service activities you perform (again, to some degree). If you are a person that likes learning, then being a professor can be very rewarding.

In addition to diversity of activities and flexibility, professors are constantly challenged. Professors are constantly learning as each research project and each time teaching is a different experience. With teaching especially, one can always improve and learn new things as the economy is constantly changing and evolving and learning how to disseminate this information depends on the unique characteristics of each individual learner.

What do you do as a Professor? In Detail

The activities of a professor fall into three main categories, research, teaching, and service. Each is discussed in turn, followed by a summary of other activities.

Research

What in the world do accounting professors research? If you are wondering this, don't worry, you are not alone. It is a common question asked of accounting professors. Oler, Oler, and Skousen (2009) provide an academic definition of accounting research as "research into the effect of economic events on the process of summarizing, analyzing, verifying, and reporting standardized financial information, and...the effects of reported information on economic events." A less technical and more encompassing definition is that accounting researchers examine how accounting impacts/informs (and is impacted/informed by) business, economics, psychology, sociology, history, politics, technology, and just about all other academic disciplines.

While there are all types of accounting research, the dominant research streams in North America can generally be divided into several topical areas, which are examined by four basic methodologies. The most common topical areas of North American accounting research are accounting information systems, audit, financial accounting, managerial accounting, and tax. The four most common methodologies for examining these topical areas are analytical, archival, experimental, and other (e.g., survey, interviews, case studies, etc.) Generally speaking, the greatest number of accounting researchers examine financial accounting issues and the greatest number of researchers use archival methodologies.

Teaching

There are several subject areas covered by accounting professors. The most common are financial and managerial accounting, audit, systems, and various tax classes. Most professors concentrate in one of these subject areas, although it is not uncommon for some to teach two or more at a time.

Other Activities

• Consulting
• Textbook writing
• Sabbaticals

Phases of a Professor's Career Life

A professor's life can differ significantly depending on where they are in their career. Professors have three different phases that lead to different performance expectations. Those three phases are life as an assistant professor, associate professor, and full professor.

What do Accounting Professor get Paid?

Accounting professors are highly compensated. The AACSB conducts an annual faculty salary survey and reports the results. Numbers below are based on the 2008-2009 survey. The average salary of a recently hired accounting professor in 2008-2009 was $127,400. The average assistant professor earned $113,800, the average associate professor earned $114,900, and the average full professor earned $137,800. These salary numbers consider accounting professors at all types of universities and colleges. Salaries vary widely from this averages based on a number of different factors.

Salaries for accounting professors are usually higher if the employing school has a greater research reputation. Typical base salaries for accounting professors at a top 50 accounting research school start above $150,000 a year (and may start as high as $175,000). In addition to the base salary, many schools offer summer research support. The summer research support is quoted in ninths of the salary and the typical new professor at a research intensive university receives 2/9 of their salary as additional summer research support money. The combination of summer research support and base salary puts the total compensation arrangement above $200,000 a year for many of the new professors at these schools.

Salary information for individual professors at public universities is often released due to governmental disclosure regulations. The following links provide more explicit salary information:

• Salary information in Utah
• Salary information for state's that disclose this type of information.

In addition to salary, most schools offer some sort of retirement plan, health insurance package, and fringe benefits.

Work Load

Professors work a similar number of hours as those in industry. Some people believe that once you have tenure, you can just show up for class and only work 20 hours a week. While there are a few people who may do this, most professors have greater integrity than this and continue to work to serve others.

The big difference between the hours that accounting professors and those in industry work is that a professor has greater ability to decide when they want to work. A professor must be in the classroom to teach and at scheduled meetings, but other than that there is great flexibility in when and where you work. Professors are graded on their output (i.e., articles published, teaching scores, service activities, etc.) and so what is important is that the work gets done, not where or what time of the day it gets done. That means a professor could leave at 1:00 in the afternoon to participate in an activity and either catch up by working earlier in the morning or later that evening. The flexibility that a professor has with time management is a very appealing part of the job.

A recent report indicates that full-time accounting faculty at four year institutions work on average 52 hours a week (as of 2004).

Drawbacks to being a Professor

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