In a time of financial uncertainty, the University has asked departments to enact budget cuts of five to 10 percent, with many of the student-facing cuts focused on free food, merch, and department events. Hiring for faculty and staff has also continued at a slower pace.
The Daily Princetonian looked at the expected salary ranges of the most recent faculty and academic professional listings posted by the Office of the Dean of Faculty. At the time of collection, there were 157 listings spanning 49 departments. As many of these positions are filled on a rolling basis, the data collected by the ‘Prince’ only provides a snapshot of the current available positions in the University’s faculty.
The School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA) ties with the economics department for the highest number of faculty or staff job openings, both of which seek one lecturer, six postdoctoral research associates, and two visiting research scholars. Notably, despite being the fourth most popular major, the computer science department only has one opening for a postdoctoral research position. Closely trailing SPIA and economics is the Omenn-Darling Bioengineering Institute, which, in addition to faculty and research members, is seeking two facility directors.
More than 50 percent of job openings were for postdoctoral or associate research scholars, which typically last one to three years. One example is a postdoc position at Princeton’s Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence, which offers an annual salary of $100,000 and access to the AI Lab GPU Cluster. As of now, Princeton currently hosts over 700 postdocs across more than 50 departments.
In contrast, under 16 percent of job openings requested professors. Roles in the “Other” category include research associates, departmental fellows, and a curator for the new Princeton University Art Museum.
Professor openings range across three categories: assistant professors, who are entry-level and tenure-track; associate professors, who are tenured or tenure-track; and full professors, who are tenured. Last year, of the 872 professors at Princeton, 181 were assistant professors, 131 were associate professors, and 560 were full professors.
Around 46 percent of positions post salaries between $50,000 and $100,000, and about 42 percent of posted positions exceeded $200,000. Across all openings, the highest-paying job listed was for a full professor for the mathematics department, with a salary range of $271,000–$350,000. The lowest paying professorship listing belonged to the East Asian studies department, with a salary range of $166,000–$241,000.
The lowest salary over all listings belonged to a one-month visiting fellow position for the Program in Latin American Studies, offering about $5,000 per month.
Among entry-level positions, social science postings were generally listed with higher salaries. Indeed, the highest-paying postdoc positions belonged to the economics department, with an average salary of $145,000, on par with assistant professors of other departments. By contrast, postdoc positions in the chemical and biological engineering department were posted with a salary of $67,000 — 54 percent less than their counterparts in economics.
Different positions offer drastically different salaries. Most postdocs can expect to earn around $77,000 annually, whereas an average full professor is offered $265,000 annually. Salary rates for professorships match the order of seniority; assistant professors earn less than associate professors, who earn less than full professors.
To see how these salaries vary across universities, the ‘Prince’ gathered data from a survey conducted in 2022–2023 by the American Association of University Professors on faculty compensation. The survey covered almost 900 colleges and about 370,000 full-time faculty members.
Princeton came in third in average salaries for full professors, with an average of $280,300, behind Columbia University and Stanford University, which have average full professor salaries of $296,500 and $289,500, respectively. Across many peer universities, the jump in salary from associate to full professor is significant, though some universities, such as the University of Pennsylvania, offer similar compensation to assistant and associate professors.
Out of the currently available positions, the Department of Near Eastern Studies boasted the highest average offered salary of around $182,000, slightly ahead of the mathematics department, with an average offered salary of $166,000. The Ludwig Princeton Branch, Princeton’s cancer research center, came in third with an average of $164,000. The branch is actively recruiting professors of all levels.
Earlier this year, a memo from Provost Jennifer Rexford and Executive Vice President Katie Callow-Wright warned of freezing most faculty and staff hiring due to budgetary constraints. Emphasizing “avoiding staff growth” was one of four actions listed; this explains the high number of lecturer and postdoctoral positions that frequently fluctuate year to year. The restoration of grants over the summer, together with the memo’s emphasis that policies would change based on external pressures, may help explain the seemingly regular rates and salaries of job postings this cycle.
Arnav Ratna is a Data contributor for the ‘Prince.’
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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