Tenured and Non-Tenured Positions

• University professors can either hold a tenure-track or non-tenure track position. Tenure-track professors include assistant, associate and full professors. Non-tenure track positions include lecturers and instructors. For the 2010 to 2011 academic year, assistant, associate and full professors teaching at a four-year, bachelor's degree university earned average salaries of around $57,000, $68,000 and $83,000, respectively, according to survey reports from the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). Non-tenure track lecturers and assistants made an average of $47,000 to $57,000 for the same school year.
  
  

Discipline

• Salaries for university professors vary by academic discipline, as can be seen in the 2009 to 2010 National Faculty Salary Survey by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources. Subject areas that paid assistant, associate and full professors the highest average salaries include legal studies, business, marketing and management, and engineering. Professors with the lowest average salaries taught in English language and literature programs, the visual and performing arts, and foreign languages.
  
  

Region

• Average salaries for professors at public universities are highest in the Northeastern U.S., in states such as Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maine and Vermont. Full professors in these New England states earned an average of $110,000 for the 2009 to 2010 academic year, according to the AAUP survey. College professors on the Pacific Coast also earned some of the highest salaries in states like California, Oregon and Washington. The lowest-paid professors can be found at universities and colleges in the East and West South Central U.S., in states such as Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas and Texas.
  
  

Program Type

• Pay varies significantly according to the type of program state university professors teach. Bachelor's degree programs typically pay the lowest, whereas master's and doctoral-degree programs pay the highest for all assistant, associate and full professors. In doctoral-degree institutions, full professors earned an average of $115,000 for the 2010 to 2011 school year, whereas they earned $88,500 in master's and $83,000 in baccalaureate (bachelor's) programs.