Newly minted PhDs in AI nabbing six- and seven-figure paydays

Photo of students dressed in academic gowns at Harvard University's graduation. (Credit: Rick Friedman—AFP/Getty Images)

Larry Birnbaum, a professor of computer science at Northwestern University was recruiting a promising PhD to become a graduate researcher. Simultaneously, Google was wooing the student. And when he visited the tech giant’s campus in Mountain View, Calif., the company slated him to chat with its cofounder Sergey Brin and CEO Sundar Pichai, who are collectively worth about $140 billion and command over 183,000 employees. 

“How are we going to compete with that?” Birnbaum asks, noting that PhDs in corporate research roles can make as much as five times professorial salaries, which average $155,000 annually. “That’s the environment that every chair of computer science has to cope with right now.”