Coming from an academic family with lots of teachers (father, sister, many aunts, uncles), I would mention that tenure at the high school level is VERY different than tenure at the university level. Time in grade does it for high school, in Canada. Has gotten rather silly at university level where they are splitting things out and many teaching positions are not even on the tenure track.The pattern I see is those who can't teach don't make tenure and end up working in industry.And bad engineers end up as teachers, though still earning slightly more than the national average.Engineers are expensive, good engineers are typically even more expensive.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.
I don't have any direct "teaching" experience, since I went the engineering route. However after many discussions with my sister who is a tenured prof, mentoring folks that want to learn is very different than teaching, at any level, where students may be less engaged. It is much more akin to the relationships at the graduate school level where it is a 1 to 1 or 1 to few. The funny thing was that a number of my engineering profs were mainly at school to do research, enjoyed teaching "interesting" courses, and often consulted on off terms to make insane money to fund their teaching/research lifestyle.
Statistics: Posted by bjtheone — Mon Nov 03, 2025 11:14 pm