I’m interested to hear from those who have experience of being promoted at a university in Japan.
How much did your monthly / yearly salary jump by as you went from assistant to associate, or associate to full professor?
I’m thinking of taking an associate professor position at a private university, with the option for promotion to full professor in a few years. I wanted to know how much my salary might increase by, when that happens. Very grateful for any data points you can provide!
by Logical_Dog662
5 comments
You will need to look at your university pay scale bands. As you are at a private university it varies between each university’s given location.
In this case you would either need to ask someone at your university at your desired rank, what they make or ask HR for the pay scales.
My university has a salary scheme (年俸制), which is represented by a chart with ranks (職位) across the top and grades (等級) down the side. There is an annual increase within each rank when moving between grades, as well as an increase when moving between ranks (assistant, associate, professor).
I was hired as an assistant professor and promoted to associate professor two or three years later. I thought I was going to get a 70,000 yen monthly increase because I thought I would be moved directly across the ranks to the same grade. (I was given the chart at orientation but hadn’t spent much time reading all of the associated conditions.)
I actually just received my normal annual increase and then was placed at the grade that was slightly above that increase. In the end, I was making about 5000 yen more.
The plus side is that the size of my annual increase moving up the grades is larger for a longer number of years than the previous rank, and this is true if I were to be promoted to professor in the next few years. Overall, this makes my bonuses larger than when I was an assistant professor and my severance pay (if it still exists) should also benefit. I also get a slightly larger research budget.
However, I do far more committee work than I did when I was an assistant professor, and any time I think of that initial 5000 yen difference in monthly salary, I have mixed feelings. But, looking at what I’d be making had I stayed an assistant professor, I am glad for the promotion.
All of this info has to be made publically available, so you can find it online for different places. Some might be harder to find than others though . . .
In many places the salary differentials are not that great. Full profs supposedly take on more duties with committees, but the reality is that full profs avoid most teaching, too. If you are teaching a lot of first-year courses, it means you are among the powerless.
The full profs benefit from their severance packages at retirement. If they have been a full prof a long time, they can have severance packages twice what an associate gets. Also, extended to them will be all sorts of positions that allow them to stay on at the universities until they are pushing 70.
It depends on your experience but where I work, the difference between assistant and associate is about ¥40,000 and the difference between associate and professor is about ¥100,000 per month. The differences get bigger as the experience accumulates. (IIRC the assistant salary maxes out at 12 years of experience, but it is also only offered as a limited term contract…)