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Job outlook for visiting assistant professors in the United States
Visiting assistant professor job growth summary. After extensive research, interviews, and analysis, Zippia's data science team found that:
The projected visiting assistant professor job growth rate is 12% from 2018-2028.
About 159,400 new jobs for visiting assistant professors are projected over the next decade.
Visiting assistant professor salaries have increased 0% for visiting assistant professors in the last 5 years.
There are over 52,946 visiting assistant professors currently employed in the United States.
There are 27,503 active visiting assistant professor job openings in the US.
The average visiting assistant professor salary is $72,541.
Are visiting assistant professor jobs in demand?
Visiting assistant professor job and salary trends over time
Visiting assistant professor jobs over time
Visiting assistant professor job growth rate over time
| Year | # of jobs | % of population |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 52,946 | 0.02% |
| 2020 | 54,922 | 0.02% |
| 2019 | 55,516 | 0.02% |
| 2018 | 54,898 | 0.02% |
| 2017 | 53,676 | 0.02% |
Average visiting assistant professor salary over time
Visiting assistant professor salary by year
| Year | Avg. salary | Hourly rate | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | $72,541 | $34.88 | +1.8% |
| 2024 | $71,245 | $34.25 | --0.1% |
| 2023 | $71,282 | $34.27 | --0.5% |
| 2022 | $71,648 | $34.45 | --1.5% |
| 2021 | $72,738 | $34.97 | +9.4% |
Visiting assistant professor jobs by state
Most common states for visiting assistant professors
| Rank | State | Population | # of jobs | Employment/ 1000ppl |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | District of Columbia | 693,972 | 185 | 27% |
| 2 | Alaska | 739,795 | 107 | 14% |
| 3 | Montana | 1,050,493 | 126 | 12% |
| 4 | Vermont | 623,657 | 75 | 12% |
| 5 | Virginia | 8,470,020 | 967 | 11% |
| 6 | Colorado | 5,607,154 | 583 | 10% |
| 7 | Oregon | 4,142,776 | 420 | 10% |
| 8 | Kentucky | 4,454,189 | 385 | 9% |
| 9 | West Virginia | 1,815,857 | 163 | 9% |
| 10 | South Dakota | 869,666 | 74 | 9% |
| 11 | New York | 19,849,399 | 1,569 | 8% |
| 12 | New Jersey | 9,005,644 | 591 | 7% |
| 13 | Indiana | 6,666,818 | 476 | 7% |
| 14 | Maryland | 6,052,177 | 398 | 7% |
| 15 | South Carolina | 5,024,369 | 368 | 7% |
| 16 | Iowa | 3,145,711 | 233 | 7% |
| 17 | Nebraska | 1,920,076 | 133 | 7% |
| 18 | Rhode Island | 1,059,639 | 76 | 7% |
| 19 | Massachusetts | 6,859,819 | 411 | 6% |
| 20 | Utah | 3,101,833 | 171 | 6% |
Most common cities for visiting assistant professors
| Rank | City | # of jobs | Employment/ 1000ppl | Avg. salary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pueblo | 2 | 2% | $70,487 |
| 2 | Coral Gables | 1 | 2% | $73,761 |
| 3 | Washington | 9 | 1% | $97,434 |
| 4 | Naperville | 2 | 1% | $58,242 |
| 5 | Gainesville | 1 | 1% | $69,500 |
| 6 | Lawrence | 1 | 1% | $56,928 |
| 7 | Baltimore | 3 | 0% | $87,584 |
| 8 | Denver | 3 | 0% | $70,021 |
| 9 | Boston | 1 | 0% | $93,214 |
| 10 | Winston-Salem | 1 | 0% | $70,429 |
Visiting Assistant Professor job outlook: Expert opinions
Our panel of visiting assistant professor experts
Tiffin University
Christopher Newport University
Kean University
Lehman College of the City University of New York
Northern Michigan University
Skidmore College
University of South Florida
Grambling State University
Skidmore College
College of Charleston
Franklin and Marshall College
Florida International University
Washington University in St Louis
Santa Clara University
The University of North Carolina Greensboro
University of Minnesota Crookston
Seattle University
Chicago State University
Elmira College
Pennsylvania State University
Dr. Stephanie Opfer
Associate Professor of English, Assistant Dean of the School of Creative and Media ArtsTiffin University
Visual And Performing Arts
What Visiting Assistant Professor skills would you recommend for someone trying to advance their career?
Dr. Stephanie Opfer: Flexibility and adaptability will be the biggest skills instructors will need. The state of higher education is changing, and the 'ivory tower' is going away. Colleges and universities are starting to focus more on career-oriented programs, which include practical and application skill sets. In order to stay relevant, the focus of humanities classes like art and film should be on teaching students analysis, synthesis, and other critical-thinking skills. The content becomes less important and becomes only the vehicle for teaching these skills.
What will help Visiting Assistant Professors increase their earning potential?
Dr. Mike Levine: My advice would be to keep an open mind in terms of the kind of early career job you will get: lecturer, adjunct, and visiting assistant professor positions are each helpful springboards towards landing an assistant prof role. So, if you don't immediately land an assistant prof position following graduation, don't get discouraged! As well, you might have to move around a bit. Like the military, it is rare that you'll find an academic job in your own backyard. So be prepared to pick up and move to where your next gig takes you.
What general advice would you give to a Visiting Assistant Professor?
Mia Fiore Ph.D.: First, I would tell all students that it is VERY different from teaching k-12. Unlike K-12, you are not placed in a school with a teaching job upon graduation; teaching in higher education is one of the most competitive fields, period. The next difference is that you are expected to be an expert/ master of your field. If you're also willing to accept that you will likely have to work as an adjunct professor (for low pay) first, then go for it! Teaching in higher education is the most rewarding job, especially for people who love learning.
Julie Maybee
Professor of PhilosophyLehman College of the City University of New York
Philosophy
What Visiting Assistant Professor skills would you recommend for someone trying to advance their career?
Julie Maybee: The World Economic Forum's 'Future of Jobs Report 2023' states that employers will be looking for skills such as analytical thinking, creative thinking, self-efficacy skills like resilience, flexibility, agility, motivation, self-awareness, curiosity, and lifelong learning. Philosophy majors are being prepared to think analytically, think creatively, be resilient, flexible, agile, curious, and remain lifelong learners.
What Visiting Assistant Professor skills would you recommend for someone trying to advance their career?
Juan de la Puente Herrero: - I hate to even bring up the term, but you need to find a way to make yourself stand out among the masses who rely on A.I. to do their work. Re-learn how to string your words and ideas in a way that makes sense to you and your readers and that sounds natural. This could apply to cover letters and essays, but also simple emails, translations and in-class activities. Sadly, one of my main concerns in the workplace these days is the constant presence of artificial intelligence in everything we do. I can't predict the future, but I can definitely say that there is currently a race between professors, students and ChatGPT to see who can outsmart each other, and everyone is giving it their all. It sounds ironic, but the only way to stand out is to rely on the quality of your own work, have trustful sources, and good research skills.
Aurelie Matheron
Assistant Professor of FrenchSkidmore College
Romance Languages, Literatures, And Linguistics
What Visiting Assistant Professor skills would you recommend for someone trying to advance their career?
Aurelie Matheron: Leadership: you will be in positions of leading a program/department. Learn from current chairs by observing their own skills during meetings and moments of decision. Collaboration: develop interpersonal and interprofessional relationships that will allow you to build collaborative projects (interdepartmental courses, for instance).
What skills stand out on Visiting Assistant Professor resumes?
Lee Braver: Colleges and universities fall into different categories which value different skills and accomplishments. The most obvious division is between schools that emphasize research and those that pride themselves on their teaching. Research institutions are looking for scholars who can publish a lot in exclusive journals and presses, thereby enhancing their reputation. They are looking for evidence of research skills: publications, awards, letters of recommendation that praise the candidate's writing and thinking. Teaching schools, on the other hand, are looking for excellent teachers. In the buyer's market we now have, they can require high research ability as well, but some will actually be scared off by too much research. They will worry that the candidate will focus on their research instead of their teaching and that they will seek to leave as soon as they can. These schools are typically looking for teaching experience, high student evaluations, and letters that single out these qualities for praise, whereas research schools typically don't care a lot about these sorts of things. Thus, the qualities one type of institution values, the other can be apathetic towards or even avoid. Teaching schools far outnumber research schools, so there are far more jobs in the former than in the latter.
What soft skills should all Visiting Assistant Professors possess?
Lee Braver: Soft skills are most important to working once one has gotten a job rather than important to getting a job since those are quite difficult to discern from applications and brief interviews. That is one of the reasons schools can be wary of hiring with tenure; a person could look great on paper but be a nightmare to work with, and you're stuck with them.
I believe that tenacity, organizational skills and time management, and the ability to work long hours are crucial to getting tenure and succeeding in academia more broadly, in some ways more important than raw intelligence (if such a notion is coherent). Failure and rejection are endemic to the job; anyone who gets discouraged easily will do so. One must persevere in the face of sometimes harsh criticism and hostile conditions (especially now that much of the country has turned against higher education and the humanities in particular), and one must be able to juggle multiple responsibilities that make considerable time demands. In this, the tenure track resembles other early-career positions, such as medical residency or working towards partnership in a law firm. The untenured often must do the scut work that no one else wants to do, made more difficult by the fact that they are frantically trying to learn on the job with little to no guidance. It is not at all unusual for early-career professors to teach 4 classes per semester, at least some of which are new and/or large, do all the grading for them, serve on multiple committees, and write for elusive publications, all at once.
What hard/technical skills are most important for Visiting Assistant Professors?
Lee Braver: Well, a Ph.D. is necessary, although one can sometimes be hired within striking distance of it. The ability to teach so as to bring students to the major and get high student evaluations are often requirements at teaching schools while writing well enough to publish, often in journals with single-digit acceptance rates, is crucial to research schools. Comfort with technology is becoming more and more important.
What skills will help Visiting Assistant Professors earn the most?
Lee Braver: Let's see-an M.B.A., the ability to pick winning lottery numbers, being repelled by the humanities so that one goes into business-those would be pretty useful for making money. No one should go into academia for the money, not just not for wealth but even for a comfortable living, which is becoming more difficult to achieve in America in general. It is nearly impossible to make a living as an adjunct professor, which is where the profession is heading. There are many good-paying jobs, but those tend to congregate at the elite schools, the ones that emphasize research the most, and these are the fewest and hardest to get. Worse-paying jobs are also hard to come by, and the competition is just getting stiffer as more Ph.D.'s get dumped into the market each year which is itself accreting all those who did not land jobs in the previous years. At many institutions, raises are minimal since jobs are so hard to come by, and there's little else that rewards a humanities Ph.D. The only way to get a substantial raise is to get a credible offer from another institution and hope that yours wants to keep you enough to overbid them; otherwise, you're stuck, especially after getting tenure, and they know it. That's why tenure is called "golden handcuffs," though I think a better name might be something like velvet handcuffs, given gold's connotation of wealth.
What general advice would you give to a Visiting Assistant Professor?
Dr. Cheyrl Ensley: Flexibility is important. The graduate must be prepared and flexible! The graduate must be prepared to teach effectively and efficiently, regardless of the delivery method and flexibility regarding reporting to the school or working from home. Be prepared and accepting of the fact that what is required of you may change unexpectedly. In this age of uncertainty, the graduate must be flexible enough to perform as needed and remain focused on student growth.
What type of skills will young Visiting Assistant Professors need?
Tillman W. Nechtman Ph.D.: When it comes to skills young graduates need, I will speak specifically to the field of History. It's always been the case that History Majors do well in the job market. Now, to be sure, there is the temptation to limit the scope of what jobs we imagine a historian can do. Career Service Offices sometimes think that History Majors teach, work in libraries, and archives, maybe a museum, and that is about it. The fact is that it's not uncommon to find CEO at Fortune 500 companies who were History Majors as undergraduates.
Presidents. Media personalities. Lawyers. Judges. You name it. History Majors are everywhere, and I think I know the reason. History Majors learn to take lots of data - and we're omnivorous about what we call data - and we synthesize it. We give it two frames. First, we weave it into a narrative form, a story, if you will. Second, we give that narrative analytical meaning. We offer a thesis or an argument about the content we're sharing. Those are vital skills. The ability to walk people through data and to help them understand your analysis of that material. What field wouldn't appreciate that set of capabilities? And, I think that explains why History Majors tend to do so well in a host of fields and professions. I don't foresee that that will change in the future.
Will there be an enduring impact of the coronavirus pandemic on Visiting Assistant Professors?
Dr. Phyllis G. Jestice: It's hard to imagine that there WON'T be an enduring impact of the pandemic. For History graduates, the worst of it is likely to be that two graduating classes will essentially be entering the job market at the same time---the 2020 graduates as well as the 2021 graduates---increasing competition. Many graduates, especially people coming out of a strong public history program like CofC's, have had many of their typical entry-level jobs essentially vanish for the better part of a year (coming back soon, I hope!)---museum work, park service work, historical societies, and so on. For non-history-specific jobs, where History majors are at an advantage (jobs that require good critical thinking and people skills), the market seems likely to bounce back more quickly.
How would you rate the starting salaries for Visiting Assistant Professors, as well as the prospects for salary advancement?
David McMahan Ph.D.: Graduates in Religious Studies don't necessarily go into careers in religion. The standard career path for those involved is going to graduate school, spending several years getting a Ph.D., and facing a tough job market. Starting salaries can vary widely depending on the college or university.
David Chang
Chairperson, Frost Professor of ArtFlorida International University
Department of Art and Art History
Are there any particularly good places in the United States for Visiting Assistant Professors to find work opportunities?
David Chang: Miami is one of the best places to find work opportunities in visual arts and art education. It is an international center for the arts, e.g., Art Basel, Art Miami, Art Context, and many other high-profiled art events throughout the year. For the art education field, Miami-Dade County Public Schools is the fourth largest school district in the nation, and there is a continuous demand for our graduates.
Are there any particularly good places in the United States for Visiting Assistant Professors to find work opportunities?
Catherine Dunkin: Graduates who can combine healthy critical thinking and communication skills should find positions available nearly anywhere they would like to live and work. They will find growth areas in healthcare, management consulting, technology, and operations/supply chain.
Graduates have an opportunity to think carefully about and pursue rewarding careers in line with their personal goals, values, and geographical preferences. They may consider entrepreneurial start-ups, local nonprofits with compelling community missions, or larger management consulting firms and corporations offering global clients and projects exposure.
What type of skills will young Visiting Assistant Professors need?
Dr. Radhika Grover: Graduates entering the workforce will need strong critical thinking skills and the ability to wear multiple hats. For example, the data scientist may need to understand, or even work on, web programming. Job seekers will need strong programming skills in one or more of these programming languages - Python, Java, C, C++, and Javascript. Graduates should also consider getting a second degree in another field, such as bioengineering or electrical engineering, because the intersection of disciplines can provide new research and development opportunities. A student once asked me, "If machines can do everything we do and do it better, what will we do in the future?" Graduates have to be ready to refresh their skill sets periodically so that they are irreplaceable.
April Dawkins Ph.D.
Assistant ProfessorThe University of North Carolina Greensboro
Library & Information Science Department
What experience really stands out on Visiting Assistant Professor resumes?
April Dawkins Ph.D.: Across the United States, most school librarians are required to have a graduate degree in either education or library and information science with licensure as a school librarian (school library media coordinator). The most likely experience to benefit them in their job search is a previous experience as a classroom teacher. Teaching is one of the significant roles that school librarians play in schools, through direct and indirect instruction with students, and professional development for classroom teachers.
What Visiting Assistant Professor skills would you recommend for someone trying to advance their career?
April Dawkins Ph.D.: Our graduates are likely to be already employed, both during their studies and immediately after graduation. Many school librarians transition from the classroom to the library setting, while they are completing their tasks. Suppose a graduate wanted to take an additional year before seeking employment as a school librarian. In that case, they might focus on improving teaching skills, their knowledge about children's and young adult literature, and picking up new technology skills. They could work on these skills by using a bookstore or public library, volunteering with after-school programs or community groups that do outreach with children, and exploring new technology trends.
Dr. Margaretha Rudstrom
LecturerUniversity of Minnesota Crookston
Agriculture and Natural Resources Department
What experience really stands out on Visiting Assistant Professor resumes?
Dr. Margaretha Rudstrom: I take this from the skill sets that experiences provide, rather than a particular job a student may have had. Experiences where you have to deal with people, will stand out. Those experiences could be where you are a member of a team where your contributions helped contribute to the group's success.
Experiences working with customers or clients is also a big plus. People who have good communication skills and interpersonal skills are valuable employees in an organization. This skill set allows you to represent your organization professionally.
For many of my students, these people skills are developed in their part-time jobs while they are students and during their internships required to complete their Bachelor of Science degree. The internships allow students to develop their people skills and apply their knowledge from their courses in the real world.
Another experience that stands out on resume is studies abroad. In the Pre-Covid time, I highly encouraged my students to take part in a study abroad experience. That could be anything from studying abroad over spring break to a semester-long study abroad at another University. This experience shows a person who is willing to get out of their comfort zone and try something new. From an employer's perspective, it is good to have people willing to try new things. The study abroad allows students to experience something different, to see things through different lenses or perspectives.
What Visiting Assistant Professor skills would you recommend for someone trying to advance their career?
Dr. Margaretha Rudstrom: I am taking this from the perspective of an agribusiness major.
If a student isn't able to land a position within their field of study, I would suggest they work on their people skills and stay up to date with what is happening in the markets, ag policy, and agriculture. Staying up to date means following the popular press in the areas you have a career interest in. That could mean following the news from places like Drovers, local and national producer associations, or congressional or senate ag committees. This will help keep you up to date on what's happening in the areas you have an interest in or are looking for a career.
I seem to be harping on the people skills piece. Get experience in working with customers, customer service, customer complaints. These experiences will help you develop critical thinking skills, problem-solving skills, and communication skills sought after by employers.
Alexander Mouton
Chair, Associate ProfessorSeattle University
Department of Art, Art History & Design
Will there be an enduring impact of the coronavirus pandemic on Visiting Assistant Professors?
Alexander Mouton: It is hard to tell how the coronavirus pandemic will affect graduates. Some I know are joining the workforce or doing creative work, which is a good sign. How this will play out will be interesting to see, though it's a little hard for me to judge from the classroom!
Will there be an enduring impact of the coronavirus pandemic on Visiting Assistant Professors?
Alvin Daniels: As with all industries, the pandemic will have a lasting impact on the Media Industry. Jobs that were once held by people will probably be eliminated or replaced by automation as management sees that there is another way to cut costs. HOWEVER, there has never been a better time for Media Creatives as 'Content is King" for streaming and cable. With more people staying home for entertainment, people are always looking for something to watch. That means that digital creatives are looked upon for new TV, movie, and audio content.
Are there any particularly good places in the United States for Visiting Assistant Professors to find work opportunities?
Alvin Daniels: Because of the World Wide Web, everywhere is a great place for an opportunity to find you. Many companies will have their workers working from home for a while, so if you have talent, you can be found and work from anywhere.
What technology do you think will become more important and prevalent for Visiting Assistant Professors in the next 3-5 years?
Rebecca Sarver: The use of remote and virtual meetings will continue even after COVID-19. Face to face meetings may still be the preferred method of contact, but the reality is that many clients who need to access services do not have reliable and consistent transportation to get to the services. Phones and computers enable more convenient meetings that are less costly in terms of time and travel. Some clients may prefer not to leave their homes.
How do you envision technology impacting Visiting Assistant Professors in the next 5 years?
Stephen Feldbauer: The pandemic will also have an impact on the way that Materials Engineers work. As the virtual workplace has become so universally accepted, Materials Engineers now have more employment opportunities that are not restricted by their desire to live in a particular location. This will make the competition for a company to get Materials Engineers even greater nationwide.