Career change - engineer to technical college teacher

[much ado]

I’m currently an engineer at a large Midwest manufacturing company. I’m 26 and have been there for 3 years. I like the company and my coworkers, don’t like the union (for wage employees), and don’t have much passion/interest in my job.

I’m considering applying for an instructor position at the local community college in an advanced technologies department - something reasonably aligned with my experience as an engineer.  I’m hoping that I will have more enjoyment/fulfillment in the teaching position, but I’m worried that it might be an “out of the frying pan, into the fire” scenario. I don’t really have any previous experience teaching, but I think I would enjoy it, and I believe that teaching at the community college level would take away a lot of the headaches that grade school teachers face.

Pros
fewer hours - the college is 9 hrs per day, 4 days per week (I’m sure I will be working more starting out, getting lesson plans ready, etc).
Possibly more autonomy in the job. Currently, I feel like I do very little engineering and a lot more project management coordinating work with the wage employees and giving work direction.
More time off - 6 weeks off in the summer, 5 weeks off during other breaks throughout the year - time to look into other side gigs, or turn hobbies into profit
My wife works at the college already, so we would have the same breaks off for traveling, badass hiking trips, etc.
Cons
Pay cut - from $75000/yr as an engineer to $55000 as an instructor. However, I think I could make some of this up by working other jobs on my Fridays off or during breaks, such as tutoring, construction, rental properties, etc.
Probably slower wage growth. If I remain in engineering, I could probably expect a promotion and raise within a year, plus normal 3% raises each year. In teaching, I would probably have a much lower salary ceiling.
This would probably push FIRE for my wife and I back by 1-2 years, from 33 to 35 years old. If I enjoy the job more on a day to day basis, I’ll gladly take that.

Retirement and other benefits are probably a wash.

Does anyone have any experience going from engineering to teaching, or teaching at a community college in general? Right now, I dislike my engineering job enough that I don’t feel like I have anything to lose by switching (except the money). If I try the teaching and absolutely hate it, then I’ll have to try something else. I guess my main conundrum is trying to predict whether I will like the job better and be good at it

[big_slacker]

Can you guest teach a few classes to see if you like it?

FWIW I went from being a network/security engineer over to teaching for 3ish years then back. Didn't hate the teaching, it was kind of nice to not worry about breaking things in the real world. I would say the pros and cons:

Pros:

Less pressure from worrying about breaking things or design/deploy on a timeline.
No worries about trying to get money or convincing people to replace outdated tech.
You get to meet and directly help a TON of people, I still keep up with some of my students.
Schedule can be more predictable and usually less hours.

Cons:

People can suck. I didn't get a lot of bad students but the bad ones are really bad. They'll drag the class down, blame you for their shortcomings and keep showing up to do more of the same.
It can get boring. After a while teaching the same things over and over can get stale. Obviously cutting edge tech you'll want to learn but at the CC level you'll be doing mostly basics.
Along the same lines, your real world skills can atrophy. I was as lab heavy as I could get away with in my classes but the lab isn't the real world. Much smaller, lots less variables.
The administration can be frustrating if they don't have your back, are out of touch, blame you for students that complain and so on.

All in all though I really enjoyed my time teaching. I wasn't burnt out when I left but I also enjoyed getting back and working on some big challenging project though instead of labs. But I will probably finish out my career in teaching when I'm ready to take a step back.

[ObviouslyNotAGolfer]

A few thoughts:

I went from Ph.D to postdoc, to a second postdoc--spent more than a decade surrounded by Ph.Ds (some of whom were dumber than shite). After the 2nd postdoc, I took a job as a lecturer at a large public university (4 yr, B.S., M.S. granting)--teaching undergrads, some of whom are fresh out of high school--quite a change in surroundings!

It really is a job that takes a while to grow into. At first, preparing lectures takes a LONG time. My first semester, I signed up for two new classes, and spent pretty much every minute of my time preparing. Figure 1hr of lecture = 10hrs preparation. HOWEVER, after you teach it the first time, it is vastly, vastly easier and less time consuming thereafter. I still update/improve my lectures as time goes on, but at this point, I have everything down to a science and the job seems like easy money--especially given the hours I put in, and the fact that I have TAs to do my mundane grading, and people to do all my printing and copying. I am also enjoying it much more than previously. I love my field and enjoy seeing the students (some of them) get excited about it.

I have definitely improved at this job over time, become a better lecturer, and have learned to have a more relaxed attitude. My evaluations have steadily improved, to the point that last semester in one class 90% of them gave me the highest score. The students greatly appreciate open-book, open-note exams. I am not big on memorization, and stress that knowing how to find info is equally important to having info stuffed in your head.

Having a UNION makes a great difference. In many places, higher ed is just another form of big business and administrators often view students and faculty as an inconvenience--a necessary evil to be dealt with as they please. Taking time away from the golf course, cocktail parties, and schmoozing with wealthy donors, is of course their biggest annoyance. Their salaries continue to rise way out or proportion to everything else--some folks (not you) are making a killing off of this business! In any case, the union has won some important pay raises, benefits, etc. We also are free (as we should be!) to teach the classes as we see fit. (Some idiot administrator at another university was telling faculty not to talk about climate change because he is a corrupt, idiotic POS. That would never fly at my workplace)

One of the best things of the job is that I really have no boss per se (don't want to p1ss off the dept chair or dean obviously), and am good at avoiding my co-workers by an unusual schedule. My office is a nice oasis, where I can work on other, extra-curricular interests while not teaching.

In any case, give it time, try to get hired at a place with a union (if not ORGANIZE one!), and learn to relax and realize that most of your students will never have the level of interest you do. A mentor of mine once stated: "I don't consider it my job to judge the quality of students we have here. It is my job to teach the students we have to the best of my ability." Also, try to have some compassion--realize that many of the students (even at community college) are racking up crushing debt, some of them come from very disadvantaged backgrounds, and an alarming number of college students are homeless and suffer food insecurity--'Murica!





 

[o2bfree]

I taught vocational electronics at a community college for 10 years. It was a blast, partly because I did it part time while in my 20s, and had a lot of free time to play around. A big advantage of the job was that I could get healthcare while working part time. I also went back to college myself for another degree during that time. Also, I earned a small pension, very small, just a few hundred a month, but hey I'll take it. A pension might go a long way towards making up for the lower salary, as would all the time off you'll have in the summer --enjoy that while you're young!

Another fun part for me was the students. I'd have the same group for 1-2 years, so we'd get to know each other pretty well, and we had some pretty wild end-of-quarter parties! But maybe such things are frowned on these days...

As some here pointed out, there can be a fair amount of unpaid prep work. It was kind of fun, though, going over new circuits to teach and figuring out how to present them in lecture and lab. There was also unpaid time spent creating and grading tests. I had to grade lab notebooks, too, which was probably the worst part.

But overall, I have no regrets about taking that position, those years were some of the best in my life! Most of the full-time teachers in that program stayed there until retirement, so it worked out well for them too. I left because I wanted to try tech writing, which has worked out great, too, it's another good career option for someone with an interest in teaching.

[abner]

While I wasn't an engineer, I worked as the machining supervisor/lead cnc programmer/ resident go-to guy for 30+years. I never thought I would find myself teaching at a CC. Through a series of events I became a machining instructor. This has been a fantastic journey the last few years. I had become burned out with deadlines, putting out fires, and dealing with useless employees who they were god's gift to machining.

The upsides:
Seeing the look on a students face when he finally "gets it" and knowing you helped in the accomplishment.
More time off than in industry. As I get older time off is more valuable than pay.
Less stress.
Easier on the body. (not on concrete floors nonstop for 8-10 hours)
Keeping up with emerging technology and trends when some shops can't afford newer equipment or software.

The downsides:
Pay increases set by gov. agencies.
Still have kids that just drag the class down or don't care.

As others have said it is an enjoyable job. I ask myself will it be as enjoyable 10 years from now? I think it will.

[Goldielocks]

I went from a 23 year engineering career to PT instructor at CC.

Pros -- having that student that really didn't get it put in one of the best final (major) assignments of the whole class.

Cons --When administration don't support your choices in passing  /not passing students, etc.   As a PT instructor, I have to provide my own laptop out of my own expenses without any tax credit.   I commute for each class taught once per week, pay for parking, etc.   Red tape / bureaucracy (e.g., the choice classrooms with the tech and nice AV and seating are always booked off, even on days when campus is 80% empty including those rooms, so you teach using transparencies and white boards in a windowless classroom.

The biggest CON, is the extreme reduction in pay.   You are right that $55k is the cap, and increases are very, very small, until you accept department head positions.  Check you local engineering association to find out average pay for an engineer, and it won't be $55k, most likely.   Instructor pay here is about 60% of the average engineering salary.  For 36 hours per week, you should be teaching a max of 4 classes (that you have prepared a prior year), if you are teaching more, it is far more work hours unless they give you a TA to help with grading, but managing a TA is a piece of work, too.  The hours are spent tweaking next week's presentations, student advising, grading, and administration (course outlines, entering grades, occasional department meetings).

Note -- as a PT instructor, I don't have much union representation.