Proprietary schools?

It would have been instructive to see the data for proprietary schools.

If my experience is any indication, we spend 25-50% teaching, 0% on research, and the rest fulfilling administrative duties.

75% — 100% adjuncts.

About 50/50 male/female instructor ratio.

Name Withheld, Dean at Wysocki College, at 6:49 am EST on December 22, 2005

THINK AGAIN!

I’ve worked in the corporate “real world,” and nothing is as grueling as being a professor. So those of you who think it’s an easy job can take another look. When you add to teaching, research, and admin the truly time-consuming things such as prepping classes, grading papers, traveling to conferences, appearing on panels, interviews, TV shows, etc., and trying to catch up on reading in between time, the weekly schedule is more like 60-70 hours per week (I regularly work 70). Most of this work is done out far from the view of staff, so it doesn’t surprise me that administrative assistants think we’re on vacation most of the time (just one of many reasons that they’re not the ones to evaluate our work). Most people who attempt to do what we do fail at it (including those who thought it would be a sweet deal and gave it a try, only to find out otherwise). To get three degrees, write and defend a dissertation, and cut through the grimmest job markets before we even START a career is a pretty challenging road. Then there’s the matter of getting tenure (many fail there as well, after so much time invested). Not to mention the fact that we usually have to move our lives (and bring along a partner who leaves a job behind). Lots of places to fall out of the race along the way. It is a great privilege to be in this role, but don’t think for a minute we didn’t work ourselves to death for it—and risk everything. All of this points to a huge need for professors to have better public relations—we need to communicate to the public what we really do; otherwise, people think we have a “sweet deal.”

Hard-Working Prof, at 12:05 pm EST on December 22, 2005

Doing the Math (continued)

I appreciate the several responses to my comment. I do understand that teaching involves more than just classroom time, but I was assuming that research and administrative duties collectively make up the “prep time” that many of you mentioned. If prep time is a different category of time altogether — and I respect your collective view that it is — then it should be treated as a fourth “time bucket” in future studies.

Jim Boyle, at 1:09 pm EST on December 22, 2005

ironic, really

“I’ve worked in the private sector. They expect results."— Dr. Raymond Stantz (Dan Aykroyd), Ghostbusters

I am an administrator at one of the lesser-known proprietary colleges. Our full-time instructors work 40-hour weeks. About half of that is spent either teaching or preparing for class. The rest is spent advising students and fulfilling various administrative duties.

Compared to 55 to 70 hours a week, this is a walk in the park. On the other hand, they do not get to set their own schedules, do interesting research, have a hope of securing tenure, or go to conferences.

An academic career might not be as sweet a deal as being born a Kennedy, but you do not see nearly as many mainstream academics trying to get out, as you see doe-eyed graduate students trying to get in.

Name Withheld, Dean at Wysocki College, at 9:28 pm EST on December 22, 2005

For Jim Boyle

Jim: Responding to your comment about making “prep” time a 4th category. I disagree. Common Definitions in academia: 1. Research time: time spent on one’s research specialization. In major research institutions, this is commonly time spent on sponsored research, or in preparing grant proposals for sponsored research. Note that one’s research specialization may be quite different from one’s current teaching assignment(s). 2. Administrative time: time spent in department, college, and university committees, and other activities directly related to the operation of the institution. Totally unrelated to “teaching".3. Teaching time: time spent in reading related to teaching assignments, preparing lectures, delivering lectures, preparing exams and assignments, reading and grading assignments, papers, and exams, interviewing and assisting students.

It is relatively meaningless to separate “classroom hours” from the rest of teaching time; teaching time is all the time spent on one’s teaching assignments, as distinguished from one’s research interest and one’s administrative assignments.

It’s interesting that “service", meaning service to the public and to one’s profession, has been omitted from this survey (though many major institutions consider a faculty member’s duties to be “teaching, research, and service"). It’s been my experience in a career at a major research institution, that “service” as defined above is another 5-15 hours per week. Was this included, or omitted, in the estimates of total hours “worked"?

Jon, Professor Emeritus, at 11:05 pm EST on December 26, 2005

A reply to all

All I have to say on the matter is that at least in our department, at our institution ALL of our professors are extremely hard working. But I beg all of you not to underestimate the amount of hard work and time required by the students. I am a mom of three, I work a full time and two part tiem jobs and I am a full time grad student as well. I think that is quite a bit!!!!!

Supermom, Grad Student and Speech Asst. at Texas Woman’s University, at 4:25 am EST on March 23, 2006