Teach and research at a university. A Job Bank median of about $122,000, a long training, and scarce permanent jobs.
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The median pay is about $122,000 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $63,000 at the lower end to about $192,000 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
8 to 16 years after high school, on the usual route.
$29,000 to $95,000 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
No. There is no licence to hold, though many employers still ask for training or a certificate.
Moderate demand nationally, from government outlook data. Demand varies by region, so check your area.
Or read the whole thing here
What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$122,000
Lower end
$63,000
Upper end
$192,000
Job Bank's national median is $58.89 an hour, about $122,000 a year at 40 hours a week. The low is $30.46 and the high is $92.31 an hour. Job Bank's group is university professors and lecturers, NOC (National Occupational Classification) 41200. Sessional instructors are paid course by course on short contracts, and Job Bank does not give them a separate figure.
$100,000 to $159,000
The median for assistant professors, the usual first permanent rank, by university in 2025 to 2026
From $100,100 at the University of Lethbridge to $158,500 at the University of Toronto, says Statistics Canada. It counts full-time staff only: sessional instructors paid by the course are not in these figures.
$64.10 an hour
The median in Ontario, about $133,000 a year, the highest in Canada
Alberta is next at $62.17 and Quebec at $61.15. Manitoba's median is the lowest, at $48.90. Ontario publishes the name and pay of every public sector employee paid $100,000 or more in a year, so professor salaries there are public.
Roughly, all in
$29,000 to $95,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is a three year bachelor's degree at a cheaper university, a one year master's, and a fully funded doctorate where tuition is covered and you are paid a stipend. The high end is a four year degree, a two year master's at 14,000 a year, and a doctorate where funding is partial and you carry some tuition yourself. If a doctoral program will not fund you, treat that as a warning sign rather than a bill to plan for. The real cost here is time: 8 to 16 years at student or stipend income, and no guarantee of a permanent academic job at the end.
Roughly $29,000 to $95,000 in tuition in all, the high end only if your doctorate is partly funded. If a doctoral program will not fund you, treat that as a warning sign.
Tenure
After about 6 years of review you can only be let go for cause or if the whole program closes. Almost no other job has this.
Sabbatical
A paid research leave, often 6 to 12 months every 6 or 7 years.
Pension and full health coverage
Most Canadian universities run pension plans.
You choose what you study
Inside your field, nobody assigns you a topic.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
One of the longest training paths on this site: roughly 8 to 16 years after high school.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Strong grades and a subject you could read about for fun. Nothing else is required yet.
Bachelor's degree
3 to 4 years
Grades matter here. So does getting into a professor's lab or research project as an undergraduate.
Master's degree
1 to 2 years
Some fields let strong students go straight to a doctorate instead.
Doctorate
4 to 6 years
Original research, a long dissertation, and teaching as a TA (teaching assistant). You are paid a modest stipend while you do it.
Postdoc, then the job market
0 to 4 years
Short research contracts while you apply. Many applicants for each posting is normal, and you go where the job is.
The subject you love
You will spend a decade on it. Pick honestly.
English
Writing is most of the job: papers, grant applications, lectures.
Math and statistics
Needed in far more fields than people expect, including psychology, biology and economics.
A second language
Required in some history, literature and area studies fields.
No licence exists. Anyone a university hires can teach there. What gates the job is the doctorate and the hiring committee. Titles run assistant professor, then associate professor, then full professor, and each promotion is judged on research, teaching and service. Almost every Canadian university has a faculty union that sets the pay grid.
The doctorate is the same everywhere. In Quebec, 2 years of CEGEP (public college) come between high school and university, Quebec has its own research scholarships, and most universities teach in French.
Finish Secondary V
Age 16 or 17
Any stream gets you into CEGEP (public college). Pick courses that lead into your subject.
Pre-university DEC (Diploma of College Studies)
2 years
A 2 year program, with no tuition for full-time Quebec residents.
Bachelor's degree
3 to 4 years
3 to 4 years. In English at McGill, Concordia or Bishop's. Quebec residents pay $103.92 a credit in 2026 to 2027 at Université de Montréal, before other fees.
Master's and PhD
5 to 8 years
The FRQ (Fonds de recherche du Québec, the Quebec research funds) award doctoral scholarships of $25,000 a year for up to 12 terms.
Postdoc, then a tenure-track job
0 to 4 years
The same as in the rest of Canada: short research contracts while you apply.
French for French-language universities
Early in the job
Université de Montréal expects professors hired from outside the French-speaking world to reach working French within a set time, or the contract is not renewed.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Published papers
Peer-reviewed articles in respected journals. This is the main currency.
Grant money
Bringing in research funding makes you cheaper for a department to hire.
Teaching experience
Courses you ran on your own, not just marking for someone else.
A field the department needs
Luck matters. Postings are written around a gap in one specific department.
Most people with a doctorate do not become professors. Plan for that from the start.
Government research and policy
Federal and provincial labs, agencies and departments.
Industry research
Drug companies, tech firms and energy companies hire doctorates directly.
Data science and analytics
Quantitative fields move over easily.
College teaching
More teaching, less research, and usually a faster route to a permanent job.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Six to nine hours in front of a class, plus office hours and marking. The rest goes to research: reading, running experiments or digging through archives, writing papers, applying for grants. Add supervising graduate students, department meetings, and reviewing other people's work. Summers are not time off, they are when the research gets done.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
At UBC (the University of British Columbia) and the University of Toronto, the median full professor earned about $255,000 in 2025 to 2026. That is well above Job Bank's upper end for the whole group.
The point is not comfort. It is that a professor can publish findings a government, a donor or the university president dislikes without losing the job. That is why it survives.
Many undergraduate courses in Canada are taught by sessional instructors hired one course at a time, with no office, no security and pay set per course. Faculty unions have argued about this for decades.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Colleges and universities first, then the rest of the field. See every career in education.
Last checked October 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in Canadian dollars, based on Government of Canada Job Bank wage data and published salary grids. They vary by province, employer and experience. Tuition is for domestic students. How every figure on this site is sourced and checked.
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