Academia.

Get a graduate degree if you want to go into academia. However, academia is no less boring, and when it comes to pay and future prospects it sucks 1,000x more than a job in finance.

I assume you want to do some decent academic discipline like science, economics, etc. If you want to do basket weaving studies - you can't be helped.

Sorry, but how can something as broad as "finance" be painted with the "really dry and boring" label that easily? I can't imagine academia being much better. The only people I know going into academia (teaching or research) were working before and had to switch to their spouses wouldn't divorce them but beyond that...

What are you asking exactly?

No, Goldman Sachs is no longer more prestigious than Morgan Stanley.

A long term career without a PhD is impossible in academia, unless you mean high school social studies teacher.

Academia's a personality thing. If you like to teach and get that warm fuzzy from helping people out it's definitely the move. Also, people who are looking to go Wall Street and making a billion are not going to bring up salient points like: unbelievable benefits, a light/easy work schedule, three plus months off every year not including your personal vacation days, the opportunity to consult/write in your spare time which can be very lucrative, the chance to cock down some young, just became legal ass cheeks.

Naturally, this all from the American perspective, though I suspect a lot of what I listed as positives are even more so in Europe. Keep in mind though, you will be expected to publish work on the regular if you become a uni prof and that can be quite tedious and time consuming,especially at the big name schools.

Any idea what program interests you? I am willing to write a long post on why I did not do grad econ studies if you are looking at econ programs.

i spent 7 happy years in academia

definitely not boring, but the pay is shit

your only reward is solving problems that you like

that bubble pops eventually when you have to be a PI at a university or lab though

you have to write grants which is basically salesmanship

we all become salesman eventually

but i am a salesman with a few of my own theorems

Such a sudden change of heart. Finance is dry and boring? It isn't for you? That translates as a "I couldn't land a job" to me.

Just fucking own up to it and say that you're exploring other options, instead of putting finance down like a dick.

lol @ 2nd bachelors, who does that

If you compare it to how much an IBD MD makes (assuming equal age, capabilities and effort spent), the pay of the tenured professor is not even of the same order of magnitude.

i have to set some of this lunacy straight

if you want to be an econ or finance academic, know that it is a highly elitist and credentialist field, so if you did not get your doctorate from the top 6 places, you are barely even in the running for the kinds of jobs AT the top 6 or top 15 places where you can even possibly think about getting enough of a side consulting business to generate the numbers you are thinking about. and even within these places, the millionaire profs are definitely outliers. if you specialize in corporate finance or derivatives pricing or even marketing, yes, it can be lucrative. what if you are doing labor economics? not so much.

i know guys who went to top places and they are teaching at big midwestern dumps making 60K a year as assistant professors. and they are the lucky ones.

you academic dreamers need to do a lot more research. and lastly: as much as i bash on economics and economists, some of the people who go into that are first rate at math. how did you do in your topology course? stochastic differential equations? differential geometry?

FYI - Your second degree isn't free. It has been paid for by someone else while you are forever immature. No wonder Europe is broke.

The pay is definitely not shit. Check out the salary disclosure from my university: http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/publications/salarydisclosure/2011/univer11… Finance profs are the best paid and are making 400K (for a minuscule time commitment) from the university, and make shitloads more from their own projects. i.e. John Hull, who makes shit loads off his book in royalties every year.

With that said, academia is not for dummies. It is insanely competitive, and getting a tenure track position at a school that pays as well as U of T is much much harder than getting a FO finance position.

^

MBP and all: take it from somebody who has done a phd and a postdoc, been through the meat grinder, and has lost contact with more academics from all fields (not just physics -- I know a lot of guys in finance/econ) than most people ever meet: the john hulls of the world are 3-sigma outliers. the 2.5-sigma guys are clearing just over 100K and the 2-sigma guys are between 60-100K. i also did a job where i was directly privy to what kinds of money they are pulling from extramural funds. yes you do have the 400K guys but i can assure you with absolute certitude that they are rare birds.

judging the field by the outliers is totally insane and i do not want anyone weighing this decision to get the wrong idea. one cannot go into finance academics thinking he is going to be hull, sharpe or merton, any more than someone going into prop trading thinking he is going to be boaz weinstein. the expected error is going to be several orders of magnitude.

if you want to do academia to solve problems and have more freedom to choose your problems, those are excellent reasons.

if it's money, forget it. the average academic makes crap money. look up "assistant research professor" and other non-tenured/never-tenurable titles. the supply of phds far outweighs demand. the modal outcome is you will be teaching IS-LM to football players in some no-name school in the middle of nowhere.

If you expect to make $500K as a professor, then you should expect to make around $10 billion as an MD. In terms of probability it is pretty close. In the list MBP provided, I could find only a dozen people making $400K+, and could not find anyone making $500K+.

If you want to make good money at a university, your best bet is becoming a football coach, forget teaching/research.

If you can get into a top program and start getting co-authorship with the right names, and Econ PhD might be a good route for you. Otherwise its super insanely competitive. And you may have to move to some shit place like Michigan or Florida or something if you can't land yourself an Ivy League TT position. And if you aren't married - you will most likely end up with a spouse or SO in academia which will make your life hellish (now you both have to get TT positions at the same school.)

BUT - the trade off after seven years is a 10 hour actual workweek - and then all the free time you want to do consulting gigs and personal interest research (where you don't even have to do the grunt work - your grad students will do the lit reviews and stats work etc. for you.) Its a hard road, but an awesome way of life if you can make it work.

What's so bad about Florida? I'd take it over New Haven or Ithaca.

This is some good reading I found after having my curiosity piqued by the topic at hand:

http://leavingacademia.blogspot.com/2011/09/on-pay-in-academia.html

Cornel West is a very special brand of asshole though. Tenure firings for not publishing are uber rare. The reality is there is a TON of STEM and non-STEM profs at AAU Universities and Ivies that do jack and shit. Particularly if they have longer term NIH/NSF grants. If you can get into a liberal arts school, non research track - oh my goodness that is the business to be in. Are there some academics who work their butts off? Yes. If they are top 5 in any given program, that faculty will be making themselves crazy with work. If they are bottom few thousand, then not so much.

This was my experience in the public sector for 2 years. Our dept. did lots with academics at the state university. I was also academic track many moons ago and left with the MA booby prize. They all published their obligatory journal articles but they also taught the same classes and grad seminars every semester so prep wasn't exactly an issue. And usually if you are going to write a book - you use the sabattical program. Not going to work for a year is a lot less stressful.

The real hustlers were the adjuncts that came from industry to teach for $2000/semester. I understand why the tenure system exists and I support it wholeheartedly (I also understand why seniority systems exist and support those although in this economy its against my own personal interests.) But on the whole, those labor rules do really pervert incentives.

^ yes and the admins are on to the game, which is why the true 10hr a week sinecures are extremely rare now.

but back to cornel: there are a lot of ways they can make life hell for you: lose lab privileges, lose your internet privileges, get saddled with extra admin obligations, become department chair, etc etc etc

of course if you want to make 30K at appalachian mountain state, you can, but that's the only kind of place where you can slide with only teaching and not publishing. you are still stuck with all the admin crap though.