Lights, Camera, Academia!
Executive summary: Changes are afoot in our family this fall as hubby returns to academia after a four-year hiatus. I talked about our decision in my post last year, but now I’m going to dive deeper on a couple of aspects that I didn’t get around to explaining last time, including why we ultimately chose Stanford over Caltech as our “forever school.”
Four years after leaving Princeton (for personal/family reasons during COVID), hubby has officially joined the ranks of the Computer Science faculty at Stanford (here’s the full post about our decision last year). He’s been at a privately funded research lab during the intervening time, and we always joke that academia is “twice the work, half the pay.” As a professor once more, he has so many different responsibilities all clamoring for his time, e.g. advising PhDs, hand-holding undergrads, teaching classes, applying for grants and funding, speaking at events, writing rec letters, serving on committees, helping with admissions and faculty hiring, etc. etc. all on top of performing groundbreaking research, which is what his career depends on. But even between schools, there are differences in how these responsibilities play out, and TBH, hubby would’ve had an easier time of it at Caltech. Caltech is so small (only 1,000 undergrads and 1,400 grad students vs. ~8,000 undergrads and 10,000 grad students at Stanford) that classes are relatively low lift and there are fewer students seeking the professors’ attention. The bigger the class, the more time it takes to manage the course, coordinate the TAs, grade the tests and assignments, accommodate student requests/exceptions, etc. All that comes at the expense of having time to do research, because let’s face it: professors at research universities are not measured and awarded tenure on their teaching — it’s the cutting-edge research that brings schools glory and funding. At Caltech, it feels like there would be more focus on and capacity for research, especially because it’s such a science-heavy place, with fewer distractions. Round 1 goes to Caltech.
But here’s the flip side: Caltech is a relatively quiet campus, whereas Stanford is so much more lively. Even the physical scale of the campuses can’t be compared; Caltech honestly feels diminutive relative to Stanford’s grandness. If you’ve ever cruised down Palm Drive with the towering palms flanking the road, looking toward the expansive main quad and picture perfect grass lawns, you’ll know what I mean. Stanford screams “mega manicured mansion with a fancy coif” whereas Caltech is like … “concrete cottage that couldn’t be bothered to comb its hair.” But beyond the physical appearances, Stanford is a hub of activity in the heart of Silicon Valley, with endless events and opportunities. Caltech has a lot less going on, probably due to a combination of its location (not in the center of anything), size (fewer people means less bandwidth for events), and culture (do the basic science, not the flashy stuff). Frankly, hubby would be very happy at a super nerdy school like Caltech, where he can lock himself in his ivory tower and throw away the key. But it’s good to push yourself beyond your comfort zone and be immersed in an environment that throws unexpected opportunities and diversions your way. So round 2 goes to Stanford.
We got a feel for Caltech last year during the “second visit.” (I suppose the first visit was the interview?)
Here’s one way in which Caltech and Stanford were the same: both had space on their rosters for someone in hubby’s area of expertise (quantum cryptography). Research universities want their faculty collectively to cover a broad range of subjects, meaning that hiring more than one person in a specific area would be doubling down on that topic at the expense of missing out entirely on others. For example, the CS department at Stanford already has a professor working in quantum computing and a professor in cryptography. If hubby was known only for quantum or only for cryptography, it’s highly unlikely Stanford would have hired him, because the overlap with the existing faculty would’ve been too great — they’d rather put his headcount toward another research area in that case. And while there are lots of professors studying quantum at Caltech (given the physics orientation of the school), they lacked a cryptographer, so hubby could fill that need for them. Faculty hiring is arbitrary in the sense that it’s not just about whether you’re good enough — the school also needs to have a gap in your particular research area if you want to have a shot at landing an offer.
The other funny thing about faculty hiring is that it’s totally ageist. I mentioned last year that hubby would’ve “aged out” if he waited much longer before going on the academic job market. Schools generally have some spots open at the pre-tenure (called “junior”) level to fill, but often none at the tenured (“senior”) level in any given year/ hiring cycle. So it means that faculty who want to switch between schools (raise hand) have a hard time doing so if they already have tenure. When hubby was considering returning to academia, his mentors told him this was likely his last solid chance. He’d spent 7 years between Princeton and the private research lab after his PhD, and he hadn’t reached the timeline to earn tenure yet, so he could convincingly be seen as a junior hire. But if he continued to wait (say 5 additional years), it would start to stretch believability if he made the argument that they should still consider him a junior hire. I’m not saying that tenured faculty never switch schools. They do, but it’s a slow and uncertain process, much less straightforward than hiring at the junior level, where there are clear job openings authorized to be filled each cycle. Hubby would’ve been happy continuing at the research lab for some more time (after all, it’s twice the pay and half the work), but he needed to get his foot in the door before it closed on him, so here we are!
We didn’t think hubby would ever be a professor at Stanford when we moved back to California five years ago, but sometimes things work out despite the odds.
So back to the Stanford vs. Caltech decision, the next factor that came out in Caltech’s favor is that they offer a 12-month salary. Most schools only pay a 9-month salary, and faculty (in STEM at least, I have no idea how it works in the humanities) have to find an external funding source to pay them over the summer. You might argue that K-12 teachers only get paid for the school year, when they teach. But professors do so much more than that: they are “publish or perish” researchers who literally never stop working. Research is not an endeavor that you can start and stop on a timed schedule, and neither is advising grad students. In STEM, I think of professors as each their own non-profit: they have to obtain enough money to cover their own salaries over the summer, plus pay for their PhD students and postdocs and whatever other expenses the lab incurs (e.g., events, equipment, travel). At Caltech, hubby could’ve gotten by on fewer grants, because they would pay him a full year salary. At Stanford, hubby has to find funding on his own if he wants to be compensated for all the work he has to do over the summer. Round 3 goes to Caltech.
Since we’re talking finances, I’ll add that (STEM) professors get a start-up package when they begin their appointments. That does not mean they are working at a start-up, haha — it’s a pile of cash that goes to paying for grad students and lab setup costs when the professor is brand new with no grants yet to cover their expenses (landing a grant can take years, given the competitiveness and lengthy review process). In hubby’s experience, the package usually comes in a couple parts: several years of PhD student and/or postdoc funding, summer salary (where relevant), and “unrestricted” funds that can be used for things like holding lab or department events, traveling to conferences, purchasing equipment, etc. To give a sense of the magnitude, a CS grad student at Stanford costs $120k/year for the professor to fund. So if the school gives 6 “student years” of funding (that would support 1 grad student for 6 years, or 3 grad students for 2 years, etc), that’s $720k. Add summer salary for the first couple of years plus funds for lab setup, and the total package is hovering around $1M. That sounds like a lot, but again, think of each professor as their own business. It costs money to run an enterprise! These startup funds won’t go far — after all, they are only a bridge for new faculty until they begin bringing in grant money to be self-sufficient. Hubby works in Computer Science Theory, where each professor might have 5 PhD students at any given time. That means he needs $600k per year to fund them all, so he essentially needs to win a grant every year if his lab is to stay solvent. (In other areas, like AI, they might have 10-20 students per lab, so the grants have to be proportionally larger and/or more numerous.) And lest anyone walk away with the impression that grad students are paid handsomely, I will point out that they only get paid half of what they cost to the professor. So the PhD students have a salary of $60k (which is not a generous amount in the extremely expensive Bay Area), and the other $60k goes to the university as “overhead” to support the infrastructure that keeps the lights on (e.g., facilities, admins, healthcare/benefits, etc). But back to the original topic of start-up funds, Round 4 goes to Caltech because they offered a bigger overall package with a bigger “unrestricted” bucket, which is nice because then the professor gets to decide where those dollars are most needed in their own lab instead of being forced to spend it on specific items!
Contrary to popular (incorrect) belief, tuition is only one small piece of the puzzle of university finances: you can see that “sponsored support” (i.e., research grants and external funding) is almost 1/3 of total revenue, investment income from the endowment is another 1/3, and tuition only makes up a measly 11%. People often complain that tuition is so high, like it’s going to pay faculty salaries – ha, as if! It’s quite the opposite: faculty have to bring in enough money to pay themselves and subsidize the students, actually.
So how did we end up at Stanford, if Caltech has won 3 of 4 rounds? It came down to personal considerations. Hubby would’ve thrived at Caltech professionally, no doubt, but the most important factor to us at this stage of our lives is where we want our family to be. We are familiar with the Bay Area and know we love it here. We have never lived in LA, so it would’ve been a much bigger risk to go there. (Plus the apocalyptic-looking smog during our second visit didn’t do it any favors.) True, the cost of living/housing around Stanford is astronomical (Round 5 of affordability goes to Caltech), but Stanford does help a lot with faculty housing, which makes the burden more bearable. If I were a stereotypical home buyer who didn’t want to settle for anything smaller than a 3-4 bedroom single family house, we should’ve gone to Caltech, where homes cost half as much. But I’m happy with our 2-bedroom condo through Stanford, so that kinda sorta a little bit negates Round 5. But like I said, the question of where we wanted to raise our family was the foremost factor, and with this final Round Royal Flush, we chose Stanford as our “forever school.”
There are so many more things I could say about the quirks of academia, but in the interest of not writing a novel, I will wrap it up here today. Hubby is busier now than he’s been in a long time, running his “professor non-profit,” but he’s also invigorated to be back on campus. It’s a stimulating and vibrant place with never a dull day, for better or for worse!