or so says, this piece, on CNN. Notably the picture is of a dude and the relevant facts and figures section at the bottom doesn’t mention gender as an issue. For what it’s worth, I actually think it’s the best job. They list systems engineer and physician’s assistant as number 1 and 2. Really?
2 thoughts on “College Professor one of Top 3 Jobs in America”
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Feminist Philosophers 
At least the systems engineer page features a woman. Though I assure you that systems engineering is soul-sucking work.
It is a great profession, but one has to realize that almost all one’s colleagues will be professors too. There are some drawbacks to that, even for people in non-philosophy departments. One thing is that as academics, professors become exceptionally skilled at finding reasons to stop things, to not do things, etc.
Also, as a quite learned friend of mine who studies US academia remarked to me recently, people who are in university administration are very often there because (a) they aren’t very good scholars and (b) they aren’t good enough as administrators to get higher paying jobs in industry. If you get involved in trying to build something, this can drive you crazy, if you find – as many people do – your administrators are trying to compete and win out over their faculty.
And of course as administrators, they may value getting grants over anything else. They may also get unfortunate ideas, such as that people who do get grants should be put in charge of lots of things. Since they sometimes have little scholarly sense, you can find someone who brings in a lot of money to investigate the best color for police to wear is in charge of a committee to decide how to invest the university’s research money. (Actually, I’m in the unfortunate position of knowing that the color of police clothing is actually a fairly knotty problem AND the sort of thing homeland security might fund.)