3 ms·

basically how US academia works. professors don't do the programming themselves. that's what graduate students are for.

• seanmcdirmid 11y ago
  No. Professors in the US generally spend lots of time managing their grad students and guiding their research, but not saying "here is my idea, go make it work;" they might help with writing papers and that is about it (also, I know many professors that still write their own code for their own ideas, and limit their advising student counts to do that). In China, you'll often have one professor for around 50 students with three tiers (undergrads, masters/entry PhD/high-level PhDs). So not only is the professor not programming, but neither is the upper-level PhD student! Everything is just eventually being done by undergrads who will ship off to the states/west anyways. On top of this many professors are often basically running sweatshops for their side businesses (since their university provided salary can be around 10K RMB/month).