How Much Can I Make? - Career Insights For Your Job Search
Jobs & Career Insights with Mirav Ozeri
Your inside scoop on the job market. Whether you’re chasing your first job, switching careers, or dreaming of being an entrepreneur, this podcast gives you the career advice you actually need.
We go beyond the job titles—breaking down what careers are really like, how do you brake in, how much you can earn, and the skills it takes to succeed. From career insights to real-world job stories, you’ll hear from people who’ve navigated the in and out of the job market and came out on top.
If you’re exploring new career possibilities or just want practical, straight-up job advice, this is the podcast for you.
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How Much Can I Make? - Career Insights For Your Job Search
Academic Career: Insights from a Professor of Literature and Music
Academic Career
Dive into the world of academia with valuable career insights and job tips from English Professor Tom Kitts. Tom has spent 45 years teaching English at St. John’s University - when he wasn’t in the classroom, he was busy with his cool side gig - writing books about Rock 'n Roll legends like Ray Davies, John Fogerty, and Richie Furay.
In our chat, we don’t just talk music - we dig into what an English degree can actually do for you in today’s job market. As Tom puts it, “it’s applicable to many different careers." FYI, many English grads thrive in jobs ranging from business to law and beyond.
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Music credit: Kate Pierson & Monica Nation
The good thing about being an English major is it's very applicable to many other, many other industries. People like English majors because they could write, they could think critically.
MIRAV:Welcome back to how Much Can I Make the podcast about jobs. Be sure to follow us and, if you like what you hear, leave a review to help others find our content. Today I'm joined by Dr Thomas Kitts, professor of English at St John's University in New York. Tom is not only a dedicated teacher, but also an author of several acclaimed books on music legends like Richard Foray, john Fogarty and Ray Davis. He also wrote about theater and literature, so let's jump right in and hear it from Tom. Tom, first of all, thank you very much for agreeing to do that. It was a pleasure. You've been a professor, an editor, a writer, an author, I should say. When you go to a party and people ask you what do you do, what do you answer?
TOM:I usually say professor, and then I'll add author. Author helps get a conversation going if I want to engage with someone Right.
MIRAV:What got you into English literature and how did you get from English literature to write about rock and roll? Oh, that's interesting.
TOM:I guess when I was an undergraduate I got really involved in literature. I really liked especially American literature. And then I got my PhD at NYU and I worked with a professor, kenneth Silverman, very influential on me. Silverman had won a Pulitzer Prize for one of his books on an old Puritan, cotton Mather, and he worked very closely with me on my dissertation and, while I didn't know it at the time, I was writing about popular culture. I was writing about American playwright in the 1800s and I think from that things kind of evolved.
TOM:My dissertation ended up being my first book on a guy named George Henry Boca that nobody's ever heard of, but anyway. And from that I was starting to write a second book on American theater in the 1800s and I saw an advertisement for Ray Davies of the Kinks. I was starting to write a second book on American theater in the 1800s and I saw an advertisement for Ray Davies of the Kinks who was performing a solo show, and I said to myself that's who I should write a book about. I've been talking about this guy all my life. What a great songwriter he is, what a great performer he is. And that's when that started. It was kind of, when I look back, a sort of neat kind of movement into popular culture, because I really had been writing about popular culture by writing about the theater, so I started to write about Ray Davies and everything just kind of snowballed.
MIRAV:So you wrote about John Fogarty and actually I found the Richie Fouret really interesting story.
TOM:He's an interesting guy Very interesting guy.
MIRAV:The twin from rock and roll to Christian. But how do you choose your artist?
TOM:I have to like the music first. Okay, if I like the music and I feel enough has not been written about them, I do that. With Ray Davies, I noticed that nobody was really examining his songwriting. So my books tend to be a little more academic than a standard biography on a performer. You know I really go into some close readings of the songs. So I felt that way about Ray John Fogarty. The same way.
TOM:A guy who just has not been, I think, appreciated enough as a songwriter and Richie gets very little appreciation. He's one of the founders of the country rock scene and he's just a fascinating guy and we got to, I think, be friends until the book came out and then he hated you. That may be strong, maybe he didn't like as an evangelical. He became very supportive of Trump, very supportive on everything he said, and I kind of objected to the fact that he never called Trump out on any of his lies, right. And I put that in the book because Richie has a very active Facebook following in which he can be very political and I sort of went into that for only three pages. And then I also told a few stories that maybe he didn't appreciate. You know, a lot of these guys want you to write about them as if they're saints, right. And when you tell stories that maybe don't contribute to their sainthood, they don't like it.
MIRAV:So do you interview the?
TOM:musician. I try to. It's funny with all three of them. It's very different.
TOM:Ray Davies you would think he was my friend if he were to walk in here now, and I tried to sit down with a formal interview for him, and he would never give me one. He kept saying next time I'm in New York he has a place in New York I will call you, we'll arrange an interview. Next time you're in London, call me, I'll arrange an interview. Never happened. We would talk backstage sometimes. He'd give me some quotations, but I never had the formal interview I want. He's an unusual guy, though. He also never signed off on giving me the rights to publish his lyrics.
TOM:John Fogarty would not meet with me. He also stopped anybody around him from talking to me. What was he afraid of, do you know? I have no idea. Some of these guys are just peculiar, and I think they've been burnt by the press over the years. With Fogarty, though, I got really a lot of help from his former bandmates in Creedence Clearwater Revival. They were great, they were really good. And then with Fiore, we talked a lot. Just the opposite. Every month we talked for about an hour, an hour and a half. We both enjoyed the conversations and, as I said, we kind of became friends until the book came out and he didn't like some of the things I said. Interesting, yeah.
MIRAV:Is Interesting. Is there any moment or any interview that is stuck with you more than others?
TOM:Yeah, I'll give you two. Okay, maybe because they're the most recent one With the Richie Fure book. One of the best interviews I ever did, or maybe one I enjoyed the most, was with Timothy B Schmidt. He was in Poco, a band that Richie had started back in the early 70s 69, I think and he was a bass player in that band. But he went on to form the Eagles and he's been the bass player in the Eagles for whatever 40, 50 years now. He was just such a friendly, warm person and he talked about how Richie had influenced him, how he got him started. If it wasn't for Richie he would never ended up in the Eagles. Just a really wonderful guy.
TOM:Another one I did, a published interview, not apart from the books was with a punk rocker named Justin Sane who's been in a lot of trouble over the last year. He's been kind of canceled sexual abuse and whatever but this is before any of that. Years ago I was interviewing him on his tour bus. He was in a band called Anti-Flag that I really liked and he said to me this is the first time I met him. We sort of became friends after that. We were careful of that right, but he said I only got a half hour Talking. A half hour. His manager walks at Newark. He says don't worry, this is going okay, we're fine. Talked another 20 minutes, came back on and told me we got that plane. No, it's okay, things are going all right. Came back 15 minutes later and we're still talking. We both have a really good time. We became sort of fast friends. And the guy came and he says no, stop, don't worry.
MIRAV:And I said there's no plane in Newark is there, he said no, so you're in academia.
TOM:Yes, and that's what you said.
MIRAV:You love being a professor more than anything else. So one of your students in the review said oh no, great professor, oh, that's good. The class is reading heavy but very manageable. He sets high expectations early on, but if you put in real effort he grades fairly. All readings are provided as PDFs, so no textbook needed.
TOM:It was a five-star review, that's pretty good and you know when I wrote that, no, I didn't see that. I'd always check the reviews, but that's really nice.
TOM:So I do make them work. I really do, and you know I really dislike and I've been hearing this, by the way, for like 40 years. Oh, students today don't want to work. It seems like they've always said that forever. All you got to do is make them, make them read. I give them a stupid quiz at the beginning of class and because I give them this dumb quiz, they read. You teach English literature, I. I teach a couple of things. I teach English literature and I also teach popular culture courses. So that's what I've been really working in the last 30 years. I guess For 30 years you've been teaching, I guess. Actually, I got something in my mailbox at St John's this past summer and there was a certificate in there congratulating me on 45 years. Oh, wow, I didn't know if I liked that to be honest with you.
TOM:I'm not hanging it up anywhere. Where do you teach now. What's it called St John's University in Queens? We're large, we've got a beautiful campus and we have approximately 15,000 students on our Queens campus. Yeah, it's a big university.
MIRAV:What kind of person goes to study English literature, I mean, and what can they do with it?
TOM:The good thing about English being an English major is it's very applicable to many other industries. People like English majors because they could write, hopefully, they could think critically, and one thing I like to do that sometimes bores students is read passages very closely Like what does that word imply? Why does he use that word? What other word could he have used? So you get to analyze things. I do a lot of critical thinking in my classes so you can go into a lot of different places with it. My brother was a history major and ended up being a senior VP at the Bank of New York before he retired. So you can move into different areas if you have basic skills like that and you can communicate. You know, if you have those communication skills and you can think critically, you'll end up somewhere besides teaching, besides publishing, and you know what. Law schools like English majors Really. Yeah, they do Because of those reasons, Because of the writing. Those reasons, yeah.
MIRAV:You also taught in India and in Germany. Yes, what did you teach there and what was?
TOM:it like India. I think I was there in 2017. I was invited to teach there and I thought I was going to teach about popular culture and American literature, and I actually taught there twice. The first time, they asked me to teach Shakespeare. Oh, so why would you ask me to teach Shakespeare? I mean, I love Shakespeare. I have taught him before, so it was a great opportunity for me, but it was a little unusual for me to do that. What was it like?
TOM:Students were very respectful. Here's an interesting story about that. First of all, you walk into a classroom and they stand up, wow, and they don't sit down until you tell them to, which I didn't know. So I said okay, I'm starting, I'm starting. Okay, I'm waiting for him to sit. And I think one of the students said you got to tell us oh, okay, sit down.
TOM:But the funny thing I got over there a lot was other professors kept asking me how do you find our students? They're very nice, good, very respectful, aren't they? Yeah, very respectful. And finally, one day, one of the professors said to me they're not like American students, are they? I said what do you mean? Well, they're very respectful. I said so are my students? They actually had the image of Animal House, the John Belushi movie. They thought that was like a typical college classroom. I swear I couldn't believe it. I said no. I said my students come in, say hello, they don't stand, I don't need them to, they sit down, they listen. I said maybe every couple of years you got to tell two of them to stop talking. And cell phones now you know I try to get them not to use those. But no, they're very respectful. But they didn't realize that they thought it was like Animal House.
MIRAV:Interesting. That's the big, the bad marketing of Hollywood. There it is right.
TOM:Unbelievable. Wow, yeah, I was surprised. And what was Germany? Like Germany, very respectful, I liked them a lot. I'm not sure they were graduate students. What year did you teach there, graduate school?
MIRAV:No, germany. I was there last summer. I taught there twice too.
TOM:Okay, I forget the first time, maybe 2020. I'm not even sure 2020. And then last last summer, and they were good students, very good, very talkative, cooperative. I talked about sound. I talked about music in New York City. I talked about hip-hop beginning in the Bronx and how that kind of now became a world music. But yeah, it was a lot of fun. What they do at the end of class is they bang on the table Like that's their way of clapping Wow With something else Again. The first time it happened. So what is that about? That's what we do at the end of class. It's like clapping.
MIRAV:What is the one thing you wish you had known before you started your travels in academia?
TOM:Gee, I found them all pretty fast. Can I tell you what I tell young professors? Yeah, maybe that'll help. First thing you have to do as a college professor besides, teach your classes, which is, to be honest, probably for me at least, the easiest part of the job. Okay, and I like the preparations and all that. You got to get publications. The old saying used to be publish or perish. You got to get publications. To get tenure. You got to do three things to get tenure you got to teach. That's relatively easy. You got to do service to the university relatively easy what do you mean by service?
MIRAV:you get on a committee.
TOM:Young professors will get on committees like oh, I don't, don't know, the library science committee, in which you interact with the library on different things. You meet maybe once or twice a year, not very difficult. Or you get a committee that you know, you overlook the budget for your college and you don't have much to say, really Just yes, okay, maybe try this, a recommendation. And and you don't have much to say, really Just yes, okay, maybe try this a recommendation. And there are tons of standing committees like that. That's easy for a young professor.
TOM:The hard thing is getting published. How do you do it? You take from your dissertation and you got to try to get some chapters published, maybe publish this book. But you have to go to conferences, you have to network. I always tell them network. What kind of conferences? Well, what kind of conferences? Well, right now I go regularly to the Popular Culture Association's conference. It's international, it's held in April, and there you present the paper and then I tell them you've got to stick around and you've got to meet people, talk to them, find future collaborators, go to see people who are editors of journals, see if they'll be interested. You really have to network. And I always tell them the same thing. You have to go to the bar in the hotel at night and just sit there and look for people you saw and if they did a good paper, go up and introduce yourself and even just say I loved your paper or whatever, and just start talking.
MIRAV:But if somebody gets into academia and doesn't publish and unable to get a deal, so they're not going to last too long, right?
TOM:They unable to get a deal, so they're not going to last too long, right, they're not going to get tenure Typical of most universities you have about six, seven years before you're awarded tenure. I happen to be on the committee that awards tenure to professors. There's like 19 of us and every spring semester we meet and review the applications and we'll often, after two, three years, if someone hasn't published, we'll give them a bit of a warning and then after four years, maybe it'll be dismissed.
MIRAV:So they have to publish in academia papers.
TOM:Oh yes, it has to be in what's called a refereed journal, primarily, okay, peer-reviewed refereed journal. That's the hard part.
MIRAV:And to be a professor you have to have a.
TOM:PhD In most disciplines? Yes, Not necessarily, but I think we have like 89% of our faculty have PhDs.
MIRAV:And what's the biggest challenge of teaching?
TOM:I think it's always about getting to know the students. I always say this I hate the beginning of the semester. Why?
TOM:Because, I don't know them, they don't know me, and it's like the first round of the boxing match almost. You're trying to figure out what everyone has and what they're doing and I like, when we get to after about three or four weeks, I know them, I know all their names. I always call them by first name by then. I've struck up several per-private conversations with them. I'll sometimes see a kid's baseball hat and say so, you're a Yankee fan and I'm a Mets fan, so we'll start a conversation by that. But once you get to know them, all of a sudden in class they start listening to you. Oh, it really is something. If you don't make an effort to reach them, you're just some guy up there talking, talking, blah, blah, blah. You know. But when you get to know them, it's amazing how they'll listen. They'll feel more at ease and you can even fool around a little in class.
MIRAV:How many?
TOM:students usually in the class. We are very good with our class size. In the humanities we don't have, generally not more than 35, and usually 20 to 25.
MIRAV:That's good, and how many times a week do you see them?
TOM:Well, in the fall I'm always doing my classes on Wednesday. They're three-hour classes, which is tough for them more than me. I always say is there anybody really want to listen to for three hours? So I do a lot of different kind of works. I'll mix films in there and all that. But we generally each class three credit class meets three hours a week do you find your students uh using ai a lot that's a problem. It has become a problem tell me about it ah, we're trying to find a solution to it.
TOM:Because you give an essay and all of a sudden you know these students are slick. They'll put in like AI and say give me a paper for a B student. So you know it's not perfect and so it's really hard to detect. We're getting better at it, but it's hard to detect that they use AI. I'm telling you, even with the journal I edit, we're getting submissions that have used AI, which is horrible, and we just reject them. If you use AI, use it for research. You've got to tell how you use it. But with students when a hand-in-papers written by AI, it's hard to detect. And I think a lot of us are thinking about doing more writing in class, which that detracts from all the stuff you've got to cover and you want to cover. I know one professor told me that's all I'm doing, just in-class writing, but it takes so much time. So it's a problem. It's a problem that we're trying to figure out a solution. I find it very disturbing and it's only going to get bigger. It's only going to get bigger. It really is.
MIRAV:Wow, writing books doesn't really pay the rent.
TOM:No, no, that's not why I teach, but it helps to be a professor when you get a very nice salary and you can do things you want to do With a merit increase that stick to your salary year after year. But you're right, books do not pay the rent, the kind of books I write. You're not going to make more than a low few thousands, you're just not. And it's going to take time Because it's an academia.
TOM:Academic book. It doesn't tell, while there are stories in there and it's about their lives. I focus on their music and if people see things like published by Penn State University Press, uh-oh, stay away from that one, why they think it's too academic, uh-huh, and it's going to be dry, you know.
MIRAV:So you can make in the low thousands.
TOM:I would say so, which project made you the most money? I think uh ray davis king's book more than john fogarty. Yes, yeah, honestly, I was surprised I'd never do it for the money never, because it's not.
TOM:it's not gonna be substantial, it's not gonna change my life for anybody, but I think the ray davis, yeah, I think it did. I was surprised because somebody I know who had written a book on Creedence Clearwater Revival told me that book made him the most money and I said, well, geez, maybe I'll get lucky here, but it hasn't really, who knows.
MIRAV:But in teaching you have tenure.
TOM:Yes, I have tenure Full professor salary's very good, very happy with it. So it allows me to do more or less what I want. I guess the average professor spends about 12 hours a week on campus and that's where you disseminate knowledge, where you teach. I always say every professor must have a project and they've got to be working on something because you're only there 12 hours a week. And so I started doing these books and things and it's really been good for me, hopefully for my university, hopefully people will read them. So you get royalties.
TOM:Yes, you get royalties. The percentage is generally at seven percent. I'm a terrible negotiator in everything I do. Michael Lyon he's on my mind because he just passed away the last couple of weeks and great obituaries in the Times and Rolling Stone on him. But he told me how to negotiate.
MIRAV:What did he say?
TOM:He says, first of all, never accept the first offer. Right, Of course. Right. He says then, work with them and get the advance as high as possible and take it. I was no good at either one of those things, but Michael made his living as a writer, you know, so it was a little different.
MIRAV:What is the going salary for a PhD professor?
TOM:It depends. It depends on your discipline. I'm going to guess, because I don't really know. If you get a PhD in, let's say, economics, you're going to be paid more than a PhD in English. I would say if we were hiring a new PhD in English, no experience just got out of the program. My guess is that person probably started about $90,000. In economics, my guess again about $120,000. It's a great disparity. And in computers, do you have any idea? You know, I don't know, computers are doing so well, no, I don't know. But uh, you know, with all ai and the job market wasn't good for new college graduates in computers, probably about 110, 120, maybe about the same.
TOM:Humanities is always low, even in publishing. You don't start very well because we don't bring in grants, grant money. We bring in, we apply for a grant, we can jump through hoops and we'll get a $3,000 grant or 5,000 grant. Scientists come in with a million dollar grant over three years education doing research, get grants for $750,000 to study things. And then comes a guy in English I got a $3,000 grant things. And then comes a guy in English Well, I got a $3,000.
TOM:Financial stability definitely is what the professorship gives me and what I really enjoy. You know, I can tell you I enjoy my colleagues, I enjoy going to work. I'm very lucky, especially I only have to go in a couple of days a week, so that's really kind of nice. What is the biggest reward in teaching, you know, I'll tell you. It's.
TOM:Look at my cell phone over there, because I just got an email from a student of mine that I probably had five, six years ago now. This is a guy who came here from his family, came, I believe, from Ecuador, Okay, Okay, and his parents do not speak English they might by now but and he came to St John's and I had him in a class I teach called writing about music, and he wasn't interested in music, but someone had told him take my class so he could know how to write. He was a really good student and his writing really improved. He goes to law school and we meet for lunch one day and he's telling me you know, my professor made me the guy to tutor other students in the first year writing class in law school.
TOM:Wow, this is really. And he said he actually said that's because of you. He said you made me write, you made me do things. He's now a successful lawyer and he texted me over the summer and says we've got to get together for lunch. So I mean, you get things like that all the time. It's just great to hear.
MIRAV:Okay. So before we go, I want to know what's next for you. What are you working on now?
TOM:I'm working on two essays now About what on Soundscapes. It's for a book called Soundscapes and it's going to be on New York City and the sounds of New York City, which does include music, and I get into a little bit about the music on the subway platforms, which is really good. It is very good, I know.
MIRAV:Right, some great musicians. Oh my God. You know Joshua Bell once played in the subway and made like three dollars. People didn't know it was him, the best I know. Yeah, is that amazing?
TOM:they're so good. And now the city. I guess now last 10 years I guess, they've had an organization where these guys actually audition, oh, and then they give them certain spots on the subway to perform wow music underground, something like that it's called. So the quality is better than ever wow, it's a great place for them to hone their skills and everything else.
MIRAV:A place to rehearse. A place to rehearse work out different things.
TOM:Yeah, it's been great, and some of them can make a living doing it a modest living to be clear. Maybe pay their rent in a shared apartment, that kind of thing. And the other thing I'm writing about is Bob Dylan.
TOM:I just did a presentation at the Institute for Bob Dylan Studies in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I think it went pretty well, so I'm going to turn it into an article that hopefully will be out with next year or so. Writing is just flat-out hard work. I often would say and I'm quoting somebody, many people have said this I don't enjoy writing, but I enjoy having written. Yes, you know yes. Relate to that Right. You know what I mean, absolutely.
TOM:So, that's the thing, and it's a great feeling when you see an article or a book published. It still is. Yeah, that's a big reward of writing. Exactly, but the writing part of it. It'd be nice to just go right to the end, you know.
MIRAV:All right, well, thank you so much for sharing your time and your expertise.
TOM:Thank you, I enjoyed it Excellent.
MIRAV:Okay, that's a wrap for today. If you have a comment or question or would like us to cover a certain job, please let us know. Visit our website at howmuchcanimakeinfo. We would love to hear from you. And, on your way out, don't forget to subscribe and share this episode with anyone who is curious about their next job. See you next time.
