Academic positions offer different incentives and rewards. Perhaps the greatest benefit of academic life is the freedom to work in any field you choose. The caveat is that you will have to find your own funding for your work, convince others that the work is worthwhile for you to stay in the department (tenure issues), and be willing to receive lots of objective — and maybe even subjective — critiques of your thoughts. Freedom has its price.
A second feature of academic positions is independence. While this sounds a lot like freedom of choice, it is not. Each "Principal Investigator" (PI), as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other granting agencies call theirproject coordinators, runs his or her own small business. Thus, independence means that you will be your own Boss. Being a Boss means that within the policies and procedures of your institution you get to run your own show and no one will tell you how to run it differently. However, being the Boss also means that you are responsible for hiring and firing, supervising, directing, and mentoring your staff. It means filing the correct paper work for licenses and approval of your protocols. Unlike the BioTech firm where you are part of a business, you now are the business.
A third feature of most academic positions involves a host of responsibilities that include various types of teaching, ideological discussion and exchange with colleagues, shaping of an educational institution, and development of departmental research goals and initiatives. Teaching and training of students is a major part of academic life. You will be judged to some extent on your ability to teach and the amount that you participate in the education mission of your department. Academic positions have a wide range of teaching requirements. Therefore, you should be able to find one that provides you with the amount of teaching responsibility that you desire.
The other items mentioned above fall into the general category of service to your department or division. How much of a team player are you and do you like to take a leadership role? If you want to get involved in running the academic programs at your institution, no one will stop you. In general, faculty get to have a say in the way their institutions are run. At least they think they do and that may be all that matters in the end anyway. Job security is another benefit for the academic scientist. Most academic research institutions have either tenure or long-term contract policies. The prospect of attaining "a job for life" seems like a pretty good deal, but the process of attainment may not be one you want to go through. Additionally, having a job but not enjoying it would make the "job for life" like a prison sentence. Thus, freedom, independence, security, and contributing to an academic environment highlight the advantages of a job in academia. While many consider tenured professorships the best of all jobs, the process of becoming a tenured professor is rigorous but can be accomplished with hard work, careful planning, some good ideas, and a little guidance.
