How Many Years Does It Take To Become A Medical Professor In The US?

starting form next year on, I will be doing premed. I really want to become a doctor. I want to help people. But, I am also thinking about being a medical professor after med school. I am in US.

This question was originally posted on Quora and it was answered by:
Eric Vene, Biology PhD Candidate


4 years of undergrad is definitely required. Then you have a few options.

One is to go the MD route, which I believe is 4 years of schooling. Then you kind of need to deviate from the clinical path and get yourself some research background as that is what professors do day to day. I admittedly don't know a lot about this path.

Otherwise, you can get yourself a PhD instead of a MD. You can't practice medicine, but instead you can be a medical scientist. This takes about 5-6 years (it varies as it is not as structured as a MD). Then you do a postdoctoral fellowship for 2-4 years. If you're one of the top people and all goes well, you can get hired on a tenure-track position, which typically gives you 7 years where you can work to prove you're good enough to be awarded tenure. The advantage here is that you don't have to pay for a PhD, whereas you do have to pay tuition for a MD.

Alternatively, combine the two. There are MD/PhD programs. You will be able to practice medicine and be trained for research. I think these are generally a couple years longer than a typical PhD. After you are awarded your degree, you then go the PhD career route to find a professorship. The PhD portion of this is funded, but I don't know if you have to pay the medical school for your MD courses.

A few side thoughts of mine:

• It is very difficult to find a job as a professor. I've seen statistics that maybe about 10% of PhDs find a tenure track position. MD's have it rougher as they are not trained in the skills a professor uses day to day (such as grant writing, bench research, and publishing), but there definitely are MDs who are professors so it is possible.
• A MD costs more up-front investment, and the pay scales of professors can make it very hard to pay it back. However, working as a clinician pays significantly more and MDs have an easier time overall finding good jobs.
• PhDs tend to look down at MDs. As I said earlier we're trained differently and if you want to be a professor you're going to be judged on PhD standards. Where I'm at, we have the conception that med students are good at memorizing and regurgitating whereas we're the people who really understand the theories and concepts of how cells and tissues function. But to be fair, we kind of suck at memorization and are trained very narrowly. We can spend our time in graduate school, and even our career, looking at a single protein. MDs generally don't have that luxury and have to know many different body systems as patients will present with a wide variety of ailments.

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