Odds of Becoming a Professor

This graphic is from a 2010 UK report and is based on UK data. Only 0.45% of PhDs eventually become a full professor. I didn't think the odds were quite that low. Of course, as in Australia, full professor is a higher rank than it is in the US as we have 4 rather than 3 academic ranks. Another interesting report I recently saw on Australian PhDs. Apparently in 2011 Australia graduated about 7000 PhDs which is about 1/7 of the US figure, even though Australia has 1/15 of the US population. And the number of students starting PhDs in the year was 11,000.