India

A tenured position in academia is vastly superior to a high school teaching job, although the pay might be worse. The hours, the schedule, the intellectual challenge, the students, etc. will all be better. However, you cannot choose to be a professor. You can go to graduate school, get a Ph.D, work constantly for 5-10 years in the process, publish a great deal, teach a lot (at the adjunct level, starting with your Master's degree), and still never get the tenure-track job. Only 29 percent of university and college teachers are on tenured or tenure track now, down from 40 percent ten years earlier. Jobs will typically have 200 applicants. Winners are usually those from the school with the best pedigree (grads of top 12 Gourmet Report schools generate 75% of profs at top fifty graduate schools in Phil), or the candidate with the best-known advisor, and then gender vastly skews the equation. But, don't forget that the interview trumps everything and, so the high school popularity contest will decide the winners among those chosen for interviews.