Community college professor here. I’m lucky enough to be tenured at this point, but when I started teaching, I was making just enough money such that if I had been paying the going rate for rent #edit: and health insurance*, I would have been losing about $100/month, before taking into account other expenses like food (or health insurance or gas or utilities…) (edit: I went back and checked numbers, my memory was a little off). And that was with me teaching 75% at two different schools (so, a total of about 24 units per term when full-time is usually 16 units per term)

I was privileged enough to be able to live with family while I pursued a full-time position and extra work, but many are not so lucky.

So, yeah, college professors are drastically underpaid, on par with K-12 teachers