Being a university professor is one of the best jobs on offer. You don’t have to take my word for it. CNNMoney/PayScale.com rated America’s top 50 careers in 2009, ranking university/college professor as # 3 (behind systems engineer and physician assistant).

Mind you, the job of professor does not appear very prominently on the "high pay" ranking (if you're interested in cash, try anesthesiology instead) nor in the “job growth” category (more on that below). But the profession does well enough on these indices to move near the top overall when one factors in its very high placing under “quality of life”.

What’s so great about the job?

First, there is the freedom and flexibility. As one professor puts it in the article: “Besides teaching and office hours, I get to decide where, when, and how I get my work done.” In addition, university teaching scores an “A” grade for both “personal satisfaction” and “benefit to society”. Of course, we also know that professors can enjoy plenty of travel opportunities and they get regular sabbaticals. The academic year is also not very long, freeing up summers for research and vacation. Plus, after some hard grinding in the early years, there is tenure – a.k.a. a secure job for life.

Simply put, university professors have great jobs. The work is stimulating, meaningful, and highly rewarding. The work is important and the working conditions -- on campuses with lots of amenities -- very convivial. Even though some professors are convinced that things have been getting progressively worse in academia over the past decades, most would still not trade their university job for any other.

In fact, the academic life is almost as smooth as the music gig immortalized in the Dire Straits song, Money for Nothing.

Don’t believe me?

Check out the lyrics to “I Want My Ph.D.” -- a satirical cover of the song -- by the virtually unknown band, Breezewood Honeymoon. (For the life of me, I can’t find any live link to the band or to their version of the song, though the reference and the lyrics I found here. What I did discover is that the band appears to be a weekend project for some Pennsylvania-based professors.)

Anyway, some of the lyrics are quite funny (keep the tune to the original in your head so you can sing along):

Now look at those professors--that's the way you do it
You do your research with your PhD
That ain't working--that's the way you do it
Money for talking and write for free

That ain't working--that's the way you do it
Let me tell you those professors ain't dumb
Maybe get a blister on their typing fingers
Maybe get a little blister on their tongues

They want to publish peer-reviewed papers
They got the fire in the bel---ly
They are movers and shakers
Because they have that damned degree

See that rumpled fellow with the pipe and the tweed coat
Granny glasses and the thinning hair?
That rumpled fellow is a famous scholar
That rumpled fellow is a luminaire

He wants to publish peer reviewed papers... (etc.)

Someday I'll finish my dissertation
I'll write it up and I'll turn it in
Someday I'll have me a tenure-track position
Man, that's when the fun begins
I'll teach class Tuesday and Thursday
I'll leave the research to my advisees
I'll criticize them in office hours
I'll give them all the third degree

They've got to publish peer reviewed papers... (etc.)

That ain't working--that's the way you do it
They leave the research to their advisees
That ain't working--that's the way you do it
Money for talking and write for free

Sounds about right, doesn’t it? Money for nothing and lots of time free.

What about the downside of a career in academia? Money’s not great, even in a tenured position; but it’s not lousy either. So that's not enough of a deterrent for those thinking of doing a Ph.D.

The real problem? It’s incredibly tough (and getting tougher) to find a tenure-track job. After five to eight years of postgraduate work -- and perhaps some time as a postgrad fellow -- there is no guarantee of landing a permanent position. Many qualified and talented academics will simply never find a full-time, ongoing position in a university or college. Many will end up among the growing brigade of non-permanent or part-time faculty (in America, called “adjuncts”) who teach an increasingly large percentage of undergraduate courses across North America. (I've written about the precarity of academic work previously; if anything, the situation has gotten worse in the two years since then.)

As economic times get more difficult -- as they are now -- things get even tighter for academics in the job market. Reports of disappearing jobs, especially in the humanities, are becoming commonplace. Nor is this just a North American issue. In the UK, cash-starved universities are cutting jobs and increasing class sizes -- threatening as many as 14,000 academic jobs, according to the country's union of lecturers.

Back on this side of the Atlantic, evidence mounts from various professional associations that this is one of the most dismal years on record for those with new Ph.D.s. We started the new year with bleak news from the Modern Languages Association (MLA) meetings, where attendance was down and job interviews for newly-minted English and modern language Ph.D.s scarce. A recent analysis of job postings in Philosophy suggests that a similar phenomenon is the case for jobs in that discipline. According to IHE, news from both the American Historical Association and the American Economics Association reveals sharp drops in the number of available positions. As with the MLA, this year's AHA meeting in lovely San Diego saw a decline in registrants and a scarcity of job interviews. Indeed, it is shaping up to be a grim year on the academic job market for historians.

While all of this evidence from the current year is depressing, the ugly truth is that there is nothing at all new about the decline in the academic job market. Nor is the trend towards increased reliance upon non-permanent academic staff a recent phenomenon. Since at least the early 1980s there have been fewer permanent positions than would appear warranted given the increasing demand among students for post-secondary education.

To be sure, the market has fluctuated over time, with an improvement clearly evident for a few years in the early "naughts" when universities did hire quite a number of permanent faculty. But in the larger picture, these years were the exception rather than the rule. Even the much-ballyhooed retirement wave of early-boomer faculty members may not produce permanent faculty positions at a very high rate -- in part because faculty members can stay on longer now that mandatory retirement has been almost completely abolished and partly because universities don't have the resources necessary to replace all of the faculty who do leave. Hence, as a report on faculty hiring in Ontario universities by the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA) makes clear, the growth of the student population over the past several years has outstripped the rate of new faculty hiring. And note that this conclusion is based on data that is pre-economic crash -- i.e., from when times were good.

Some of you, I know, will blame administrators for failing to create as many new professorial positions as are needed on campuses today. This is a natural reaction, perhaps, but a little unfair. In my experience, deans and VPs want more than anything to recruit the best faculty -- and as many of them as possible. I think we all agree that full-time and permanent academic staff (including those in the instructor ranks) are far preferable than part-timers and transients -- if for nothing else because they provide greater quality and consistency of service. Like every other administrator I know, therefore, I scrap and beg, borrow and barter, for any permanent position that can be created in my faculty.

So why aren't there more permanent faculty positions? Clearly there's not enough money in the post-secondary education system -- especially in the annual operating funds that colleges and universities use to pay their employees. This shortfall makes it difficult to appoint the staff necessary to maintain the highest standards in teaching and research, and in the student learning experience. Current government policies and the uncertainties that characterize the budgetary process at the post-secondary level combine to make it nearly impossible for responsible administrators to invest in the additional full-time faculty they need.

As a result, the situation for academics in the labour market is feast or famine. If you are fortunate enough to hold a tenured or tenure-track job at a university, then you get to enjoy the substantial benefits of having one of the best jobs in the world. If, on the other hand, you are not so fortunate as to land that tenure-track position, then staying in academic life can be very challenging indeed.

In the end, I still urge talented and determined young scholars to pursue their academic dreams -- just as I did in the equally challenging climate of the late 1980's and early 1990's. But I feel compelled to encourage them to go in to it with their eyes wide open.