Given how much money you think college professors make and how little work they do, you ought to consider a career shift and get on the gravy train by becoming a college professor. Here's what you can look forward to---if you have a bachelor's degree you probably have 5-7 years of graduate school to complete a terminal degree, depending on your academic discipline a few more years as a post doc, and then you can get your first job, as an assistant professor. After six years and good work you might receive tenure and after another five to ten years, you might be promoted to professor. So, if you start graduate school in the fall you can expect to be the top of your career around 2038 to 2040. Positions at research universities are comparatively rare, so you will probably find a position at a community college or regional university. You will have a grad assistant if you can secure external funding for this person. You will be able to attend conferences or meetings if you pay your own way, because travel money is such that fully-funded trips are rare. You might be able to do consulting, but that depends on your academic discipline and your national reputation, which will result to a great extent from your record of publication and research. So, you better plan on spending nights and summers doing research in a lab and writing peer-reviewed articles and books so as to build a solid H index and I-10 index. Until you reach the rank of professor, it is likely you will do virtually no consulting. And, by the way, you will not receive end of the year bonuses, holiday gifts, you won't attend holiday parties paid for by your employer, you likely will pay for your own parking, receive no equipment beyond your first year as a faculty member, and you won't have an expense or entertainment account. You can count on annual raises of zero to one percent at public institutions determined by the state legislature. How would you like to have Jack Whitver or Brad Zaun determine your annual raise? So, undoubtedly there is a faculty member who owns a fabulous house in Phoenix, but my experience of more than 40 years in higher education, including eight years at ASU, is what I described above. The life of a faculty member has tremendous intrinsic benefits, but I don't believe I ever talked with colleagues who said that they got into higher education because of the monetary rewards.
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