I'm curious, if you are NOT doing one of those "hot" topics, how much money would you be making by doing research in an academic setting? My assumption is that you'll probably have to do "hot" topics if you are doing research for gov-affiliated orgs or medical settings, especially if you only have grants to supply salary, right?
That being said, if you are doing "hot" topics and you get grant money, how is your salary calculated? How much do someone with a 5-year degree make from their department on average? And what percentage of grant money can be used as stipend? What's a realistic range of some major grants for psychology-related research, like those by NIH or CDC?
Money is another reason I've been holding out on an academic career. I'm looking for evidence for my opinion (bias). Thanks for your input in advance!
In my opinion, the most monetary gain is made in academia in the medical setting. These positions are VERY competitive and usually take about 10+ years to attain. There are several folks here who already hold faculty positions (who have completed their degrees in the past few years). There are different qualifiers for professors (something like: research professor, assistant, associate, then full professorship). In the academic medical setting, you have your base salary, then you have your grant-supported 'stipend,' which may be like 20% of the grant distribution for the year.
So, let's say you get a grant of $3 million dollars over 5-years, that money will go towards on-going research costs (20%), institutional over-head (50% - ridiculous, I know but someone has to pay the electric bill, etc), and staff (30%). And of that 'staff' resource, you, as the principal investigator, earn about 10-20% which complements your salary. So if you're making $110K base-salary, over 5-years with one of your grants, you could add about $30K and you'd end up with about $140K per year. But again, this is very competitive and you are expected to churn out lots of academic articles, present at national/international conferences, and really network to spread your findings around to the peer-reviewed community.
Some professors in academic medical settings (who are clinical psychologists) have concurrent grants and also earn extra money by being reviewers for prestigious journals. That will raise your annual salary even more. But, these clinical psychologists are the exception and usually live in big cities (NYC, Chicago, LA, etc.). If increasing your earning potential with a doctorate in clinical psychology is your goal, go straight for academia and learn how grant funded-research can work for you. Also, most of these psychologists no longer provide individual psychotherapy. Their time becomes too valuable.
Hope this helps.
P.S. Yes, you'd have to focus on 'hot topics' because it's where the money is; however, if you clearly see a need that should be met, you can be creative and try to get it funded. But most big grant-funders have their topics of need already in place (like NIMH, NIH, American Heart Association, American Cancer Society, etc). Oh, I forgot: The medical center you work for will most likely expect you to teach some courses and provide mentorship to junior investigators and doctoral students. You will also work closely on teams with MDs, other types of PhDs, RNS, PAs, etc.
Also, you asked about the lower limits of this earning potential. Above, I presented the upper-range of earning for clinical psychologists (I'm sure there are upper, upper limits who earn more than stated above). Others may be able to speak more realistically about the lower limits. My guess is that a beginning research professor may earn about $60K- $75K (and that may include grant stipends from the mentor who is the P.I. until grants are established for this junior faculty). I used to work for a surgeon that had heavily-funded grant work. I hope to return to this research one day with my skills as a clinical psychologist. The need is there. The work is novel and will significantly reduce the cost of morbidity and mortality in an average medical setting. However, in order to do this I have a lot of work to secure on my own before I can hope for any kind of academic/faculty appointment.
