How much do MD/PhD graduates make as professors?

[deleted993768]

I'm trying to weigh my different options for medical school and was just wondering if anyone knew some representative incomes for professorships at a university? Specifically looking at tenure-track introductory positions.

I know that since MD/PhDs often do a mix of research and clinical practice, their salary will be dependent on the actual ratio. I wasn't sure if there was a set salary the University establishes that is then bolstered by the clinical work or how any of that works and would love some insight.

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[MSTPadvocate]

I was paid at going MD rate despite the fact that I didn't do anything clinical for the first 2 years. Some of my other offers split it into clinical v. research time - ie if an assistant prof doing research only made 100K and a full time clinician made 200K and they were on the traditional 80/20 split, they would make 80K + 40K = 120K.

Each school does it differently and this is why you want to make yourself highly competitive (K08 + Burroughs + papers + clearly fundable project) so you have negotiating power.

 

[Fencer]

It depends upon the specialty, geography and school type (public/private) - in that order. In the end, you must eat what you kill. You earn RVUs from clinical experiences, and fund your research time from grants and/or endowments. In general, given your specialty, there is a range of $ based upon AAMC tables (specialty, geography and school type) with information on 25%, 50%, and 75% for Instructors, Assistant Professors, Associate Professors, Chief of service, and Chairs of Dept. These numbers are also averages for the multiple years of each stage. So, as you jump, don't expect 50% level (unless a rock star). My best advise is to negotiate FTE time rather than money. It will come, whereas time is more difficult to earn it/protect it.

For many years, I was as an Assistant Professor, started at 5%, then as I got funded jumped to 30%, got recruited to another institution at 50%, promoted to 50%, but eventually at 95% for specialty/rank.

 

[tortuga87]

I think you should expect around 85-110k if you are requesting >80% research:

In psychiatry, an MD/PhD recently got hired as an assistant professor fresh out of residency for 85K per year. This person did not have a K award and will have around 90% research time.

At my previous institution, MD/PhDs in cognitive specialties (e.g., internal medicine, neurology, psychiatry) have been hired at most 130K as an assistant professor for >80% research. They are usually hired at around 110K per year. This was told to me by my former research advisor who is involved in hiring decisions.

 

[Fencer]

That would be in the Coasts not inside the country, where $140-160K might happen....

 

[deleted993768]

So I guess if you want to get payed more, you'd have to commit to more clinical time?

 

[sourpatch fetish]

So I guess if you want to get payed more, you'd have to commit to more clinical time?

From what I've read, in general, you eat what you kill. You have to bring money to the department one way or another. This can be done through increased clinical time or by bringing in grant money.

 

[Lucca]

So I guess if you want to get payed more, you'd have to commit to more clinical time?

The way I see it as a student:

1. More clinical time
2. Leave for private practice
3. Leave academia for senior position in industry
4. Start a company / sit on boards / do projects for industry in exchange for $$$ / consulting fees
5. Become a chair / dean.

so to make more money u either do less science or do more of the kind of science that gets paid (drugs / diagnostics / tech).

 

[Fencer]

In academia, you still get to make >250K just doing good research as physician-scientist... plus a lot of other perks that your practice has to pay for if in PP.

 

[deleted993768]

In academia, you still get to make >250K just doing good research as physician-scientist... plus a lot of other perks that your practice has to pay for if in PP.

yeah I’m just wondering how many years after graduation that would even take

 

[Fencer]

Possibly 10-12 years .... However, this is something that you then earn for another 20+ years..

 

[sourpatch fetish]

Possibly 10-12 years .... However, this is something that you then earn for another 20+ years..

To put this into perspective, you'll likely do sth like 5-7yrs total of residency+fellowship and/or postdoc/instructorship. So it would only take maybe north of halfway into assistant professorship for one to earn ~250k/yr, if I'm understanding correctly?

 

[StIGMA]

There is a WIDE range of starting salaries for physician scientists and is very field and institution specific. And it definitely depends on what the candidate brings to the table. I’ve seen starting offers from ~ 50% starting clinical salary to 100% clinical salary (within same institutoon, at tenure track research vs tenure track clinical), the difference largely being whether you are applying to a big name coast school or not. Of course there is a ton of variation. In some fields it’s still feasible to start at 300s with 80% protected time and significant startup, for the right candidate.

 

[tortuga87]

There is a WIDE range of starting salaries for physician scientists and is very field and institution specific. And it definitely depends on what the candidate brings to the table. I’ve seen starting offers from ~ 50% starting clinical salary to 100% clinical salary (within same institutoon, at tenure track research vs tenure track clinical), the difference largely being whether you are applying to a big name coast school or not. Of course there is a ton of variation. In some fields it’s still feasible to start at 300s with 80% protected time and significant startup, for the right candidate.

Yeah but let's not get the expectations of the new people up too high so that they end up disappointed. Most MD/PhDs who shoot for a faculty position with majority research will make 80-160K in academia, towards the higher end if you want to work with fewer research colleagues and maybe feel a little out of place and lonely. Let's not forget that this also occurs in your mid-30s, and you make ~250K in your late 40s if you work hard and do not bail. In contrast, 250K is what your clinical colleagues make in their early 30s.

This is a common theme in academia. It is hierarchical which means that you start at the bottom of the barrel, in a pile of manure. You then crawl your way up over the years. In order to sustain a solid hierarchy, you need very low to very high. This is just another example of the Pareto principle, and it applies to virtually any large organization.

 

[StIGMA]

Yeah but let's not get the expectations of the new people up too high so that they end up disappointed. Most MD/PhDs who shoot for a faculty position with majority research will make 80-160K in academia, towards the higher end if you want to work with fewer research colleagues and maybe feel a little out of place and lonely. Let's not forget that this also occurs in your mid-30s, and you make ~250K in your late 40s if you work hard and do not bail. In contrast, 250K is what your clinical colleagues make in their early 30s.

This is a common theme in academia. It is hierarchical which means that you start at the bottom of the barrel, in a pile of manure. You then crawl your way up over the years. In order to sustain a solid hierarchy, you need very low to very high. This is just another example of the Pareto principle, and it applies to virtually any large organization.

I heard this all the time and believed it up until about mid-residency, but the places I’ve been and been privy to offers have generally been equivalent salaries to clinical colleagues. This is of course not the case everywhere or perhaps even most places.

I think lowering everyone’s expectations can have negative consequences including dropping out of a potential career in research (or not starting at all) as well as causing people to negotiate less robustly when it comes time to do that. It’s not good to devalue yourself.

 

[Envro55]

I have the following questions:

How much would you make if you go to industry after residency/fellowship?

Are there opportunities to still practice medicine if you go into industry?

What disadvantages are there to working in industry?

 

[Fencer]

For industry - Pharma
Entry level positions are 120-200 K depending upon responsibilities.
Difficult to go up salary wise...
One day you are working on Epilepsy, tomorrow you are moved to AD (if they keep you) due to C-suite/marketing changes.

 

[tr]

My impression is that the senior academics I see in my field are not relying on salary for the majority of their income. Based on the extensive lists of disclosures for industry consulting and paid talks, I'm guessing this must be a very lucrative side hustle. Others are running small and extremely expensive boutique private practices on the side.

Personally I don't understand how it works out to do research for a salary much above the NIH cap. How does the institution justify eating that cost?

Higher salary is a double edged sword because it gets increasingly difficult to buy out your own time. Trying to wedge a clinician's salary into a research budget is an exercise in futility. You end up doing a ton of work for too little protected time because the actual effort the work takes doesn't fit in the budget.

My current institution gets around this by providing a 'clinical supplement,' meaning you make slightly more salary for FTE spent in clinical care, but budget for the lower salary rate on research projects.

 

[kepler16b]

There is a WIDE range of starting salaries for physician scientists and is very field and institution specific. And it definitely depends on what the candidate brings to the table. I’ve seen starting offers from ~ 50% starting clinical salary to 100% clinical salary (within same institutoon, at tenure track research vs tenure track clinical), the difference largely being whether you are applying to a big name coast school or not. Of course there is a ton of variation. In some fields it’s still feasible to start at 300s with 80% protected time and significant startup, for the right candidate.

Is the compensation better or worse at coastal elite schools?

 

[Lucca]

Is the compensation better or worse at coastal elite schools?

Generally worse. In both medicine and science how much you earn is inversely proportional to general geographic desirability and prestige.

 

[Fencer]

Depends... super star? but in general, better in the institutions that are ranked (USNWR) between 25-75, particularly at private institutions.

 

[CheGuevaraMD]

On average, academic salaries are low because NIH grants are relatively small, and there's no meaningful private sector alternative. Clinical salaries are higher because over half of Americans have private insurance.

Universities can pay professors more through the use of general funds, but they are hurting now both clinically and academically due to COVID. There is not really a way to earn more and be a productive academic without university slush funds, as every research hour you trade for the clinic leads to lower scientific productivity.

 

[interstellar taco]

I am an MD/PhD surgical subspecialist in a big city at a top 10 institution for my (and most) field(s). I was hired at 50/50 clinical/research with a several-year guarantee (being purposely vague since I know colleagues read this board). The guarantee was $300k, though I know colleagues at my and similar institutions who had guarantees of $275k-$375k, with variable research percentages. After guarantee is over, the expectation is that I'll have grant funding to help support my salary.

Note: I've found that in surgical fields, the whole "% research" thing (e.g., my 50/50 setup) is basically just a paper commitment. If you're at a strong institution, you can decide how much or how little clinical work you want to do. If you've got a busy, buzzing lab with grant funding and a competent team, nobody is going to scrutinize a decision to do 4 days of clinic/surgery or structure your days so you can maximize RVU, if that's important to you. But getting the lab to be productive is a multi-year feat so most people (including myself) stick to 50% or less of clinical work.

 

[Patros]

So, I am assuming the AAMC faculty salary tables are meaningless for physician-scientists? There are some pretty crazy salaries in there but I guess that data is heavily weighted toward pure clinical work.

Out of curiosity, is there a way to know which specialties have the biggest discrepancies between purely clinical work and split clinical/research work? My assumption is that procedural or surgical specialties have bigger discrepancies, pathology would have the least, and IM subspecialties are somewhere in the middle. But this is just a guess, there is zero transparency when it comes to salaries.

 

[interstellar taco]

Many physician-scientists at name-brand state schools have public salary information. You can easily search the names of physician-scientists at these institutions to get an idea of what their total compensation is. Michigan's data are a bit opaque (they only list the state salary component and provide no information on "other compensation," which is the category that includes specialty-specific salary differential, bonuses for clinical work or grant supplementation, etc.). But California and Texas and some other states tend to be much more transparent.

 

[Fencer]

For Texas, you need to download the data to access "some" of the other compensation. Some bonuses and salaries from VA (or other institutions) are not reported in Texas Tribune salary data (not even in the spreadsheet). The other aspect that is not factored-in, is the relatively generous benefit package with health insurance, disability, and retirement match.

 

[dl2dp2]

I am an MD/PhD surgical subspecialist in a big city at a top 10 institution for my (and most) field(s). I was hired at 50/50 clinical/research with a several-year guarantee (being purposely vague since I know colleagues read this board). The guarantee was $300k, though I know colleagues at my and similar institutions who had guarantees of $275k-$375k, with variable research percentages. After guarantee is over, the expectation is that I'll have grant funding to help support my salary.

Note: I've found that in surgical fields, the whole "% research" thing (e.g., my 50/50 setup) is basically just a paper commitment. If you're at a strong institution, you can decide how much or how little clinical work you want to do. If you've got a busy, buzzing lab with grant funding and a competent team, nobody is going to scrutinize a decision to do 4 days of clinic/surgery or structure your days so you can maximize RVU, if that's important to you. But getting the lab to be productive is a multi-year feat so most people (including myself) stick to 50% or less of clinical work.

This seems more typical now for even cognitive specialties. I think salary figures for MD/PhDs overall have improved. If you are a qualified candidate and do a round of national job search, in general, your overall package should be competitive to a comparable clinician--and no worse than say 80-90% of a typical clinician if you are salaried.

If you are not salaried, such as is very often at "coastal elite" institutions (as above), things can be HIGHLY variable, as your salary is often 100% eat what you kill. There are many examples where fresh assistant professors make more than senior faculty due to very niche practice/research areas that are major rainmakers. It's hard to make across the board generalizations.

 

[SurfingDoctor]

Just because you make the NIH salary cap doesn’t mean it’s a negative balance to the University and often because of that, they float the difference. This is because of 1) it gets the University prestige which brings in addition philanthropy and endowments (which in turn, fund salaries and units and new buildings) and 2) the University makes money off the indirects. In my institution, they collect about 40 cents on the dollar so for a 4 or 5 year R01 with a modular budget, that’s like 150K per year. If you have two R01s, its double. And especially considering that most physicians generate enough RVUs to cover their salary, the salary cap is mostly inconsequential from the University standpoint.