5 ms·
What is the hourly rate that you would expect for a professor? Consider that a tenure track professor (ignoring adjuncts) making $60,000 is expected to teach 3
by ebiester 6y ago
What is the hourly rate that you would expect for a professor?
Consider that a tenure track professor (ignoring adjuncts) making $60,000 is expected to teach 3-4 classes, write original peer-reviewed research, and perform "service" (which takes the form of helping the university run itself, external speaking events, and advising.)
Each individual class takes 15-20 hours a week for a course they haven't taught before (which is common). Some classes require managing a group of Teaching Assistants for classes of 500 people. Other universities may have a teacher responsible for as many as 70 students without a TA.
So, that ends up being a 60 hour week. (This is average; I've seen more.) So, without overtime, that ends up at a little more than $22 an hour for a 10 month contract.
(The summers, in which they are either paid a small sum for summer classes, are not included. However, that's also when they are expected to research and write and publish, all technically unpaid. If you consider that time as paid, drop the $22 to $20 an hour.)
So, when you talk about "not caring enough," consider that they do not get stock options for working another 20 hours a week.
Further, a large portion of their job is bringing prestige to the university. That is why their job is based on the output of their research rather than their teaching. As such, in the first 7 years of the job, they are being judged on their publications first and their teaching second. As such, you are upset with a professor because they are only working 60 hours and not dedicating more time to what is a secondary concern for promotion and, for pre-tenured professors, keeping their job.
If you want professors to care, you need more lecturers paid the same amount to teach fewer courses. However, that makes university more expensive. (Or, you end up hiring adjuncts making sub-minimum wage for the same workload, sans research.)
It's a hard problem that looks easy on the outside.