The Professor's Job

A professor's job (that is, a real professor, one that has a regular, permanent job, not a "sessional" who is just hired to teach a single course, or one course at a time) essentially consists of 3 unequal parts: teaching, research, and administration. Depending on the institution, one can be more important or time consuming than the other(s). Some individuals tend to like research more than teaching, or vice-versa, and most people initially dislike administration, which usually entails sitting at endless meetings and learning Robert’s rules. Young hotshots tend to like research more than teaching, but as they mature, many realize that what matters in life are the people they have touched, and eventually focus more of their energy on teaching. Alternatively, they might realize that the real power is in administration, and they might start to escalate the upper echelons of the university (Departmental Chair, Dean, VP, Principal), after which they appear in the oddest places, like in high level government commissions. Others continue their research careers until retirement and beyond.

 

     At most “elite” institutions, teaching proficiency (if it could be measured) is not really a pre-requisite to be hired. Many universities say they care about teaching, loudly and publicly, but if you look at their hiring and reward system, it is clear that often they are just interested in a talented researcher, and assume the rest will fall in place in due time. If you are more interested about life in academia, please read "Academic Duty"  by Donald Kennedy, a former president of Princeton. Acgtually, the book only depicts the good aspects of a good acedemic job at a high level research-orieneted universtiy, the way things should be or used to be, but things have chaged considerably. In any case, here I will touch only the basis.

TEACHING.- If you can’t do, teach!!. If you can’t even teach, run for public office. This old adage/joke does not apply to university “teachers”. Unlike many other teachers that you may encounter in life, most university instructors are not “teachers”; they are doers. In fact, usually they do not have ANY formal training in teaching. Furthermore, they are more than merely practicing biologists, economists, engineers, etc, but can be the movers and shakers of their respective fields. Usually, these are the people who have obtained the highest possible degree in their fields, and have engaged in research that supposedly advanced the frontiers of their respective fields, and often still do. Of course, there is quite a range, from Oxford and Harvard, where the professors are world-renowned figures in their respective fields, to small universities or community colleges, where all instructors might not have Ph.D.s, and often do not carry out any research.

      There is another old joke about a politician visiting a university and asking a professor how many hours he taught. The professor thought for a moment: 3 hours in class per week, 5 hours preparing lectures per week, and an hour or two grading papers and advising students per week. The professor replied “about 9 to 10 hours”, to which the politician said: "Long day! Good thing it is light work”.

     When I was an undergrad, I was surprised to learn that professors often teach only two or 3 courses per year, one or 2 per term. I thought “That is it?!, 3 or 4 hours per week?, What a life!”. Later, I learned the hard way that each hour of class time requires 5-10 hours of preparation, at least the first time the course is taught, and 2 to 4 hours thereafter if the course is kept up to date. Furthermore, teaching is seldom a professor’s only or even primary duty. Administration (i.e., formulating and enforcing departmental and university policy) and research and usually take a significant part of a professor’s time. If done conscientiously, it is certainly not “light work”.

     As much as most universities say that they care about teaching, the sad fact is that they do not, or at least they have not found a way to reward good teaching WITHOUT giving up their roles as research institutes. In fact, relief from teaching is usually the first reward any successful "star" professor gets. In one particularly ironic case I am aware of, the reward for getting the “best-teacher” award was being excused from any teaching for the following year! It is partly because research can be measured via several  imperfect but well-recognized methods (number of publications, quality of publications, money awarded via research grants, etc.), but good teaching is extremely difficult to measure. The benefit to the university (tuition) increases with every additional student crammed into a classroom, which actually decreases the quality of the students' learning experience. The benefit to students is seldom immediately evident; in fact, it ought to be quantified several years afterwards. With regular professors excused from their teaching duties, teaching often falls on the shoulders of poorly-paid short-term part-time faculty who are hired mere days before a course is due to start, and sometimes are not given an office or even a course budget. Was it not the point of university to be exposed to these great minds who were the leading researchers of their fields? I guess not!

     Maybe I am being too cynical; sone places do place a high premium on teaching, by both providing opportunities for students and supporting, encouraging, and rewarding good instructors. Like with everything else in life, there is a trade-off, and these places do not claim to be research-intensive institutes. Small, liberal-arts colleges fall under that category in the USA. In Canada, such a simple categorization is not possible, but there are still good and not-so-good universities. I suppose that the best universities for a student are those where very few courses are taught by short-term part-time instructors, and most courses are taught by regular, full-time faculty, with real jobs and an active research programme (something the McLean's ratings do not take into account). This criterion is important because, among other things, regular faculty with real jobs have more time to prepare, teach the same course(s) every year, are more likely to have an active research program (large or small), are better connected, can better direct student research, and do not fear the scorn of failing students. The result is higher standards.
 
ADMINISTRATION.- University professors have unique jobs, in that they are both the employees and the “bosses”. That is, they work for a department within a university, but they also direct the department and the university. With the help of administrators, professors essentially run the university. They have the final say on admission standards, allocation of funds, hiring and promotions, degree granting, etc. They are the “bosses” of themselves, or at least, their own administrators. An analogous situation is perhaps a large shopping mall where independent store owners have a say on policies that affect not only their store, but their area of the mall, and the entire mall itself. They do not always agree, as you might imagine, and everyone is affected by the group's decisions, good or bad.

     Some people hate administration and some people like it, but those who do not participate find themselves eventually short-changed. Many professors LOVE to hear themselves talk and consider themselves great orators, so meetings are often filled with grandiloquence comparable to that in the House of Commons. The ones that not only like administration but are also good at it eventually move up the ranks, and become Deans, VP’s etc. Of course, their involvement in teaching and research decreases, although occasionally they like to teach a lecture or two, just to say they can still do it. Their labs fall under the supervision of a research assistant or a post-doc.

     Over the past 2 or 3 decades, as tuition has vastly increased, the number of professional administrators has grown at an alarming rate. It used to be that they were outnumbered by academicians. Now it is the exact opposite. They have to justify their own existence, so they purposely make things far more difficult and complicated than they need to be, and continue to add to their ranks.  It is getting to the point that at some institutions, administrators now outnumber even students. Douglas Murray joked that it would be more efficient and cheaper if, upon arriving on campus, each student were assigned a personal butler! 
 
RESEARCH.- The other main part of the job consists of research. It can be large or small scale, depending on the field and the individual. Some professors with large labs are essentially heads of small institutes; they might have permanent assistants, secretaries, technicians, associate researchers, and the obligatory graduate students. On the other hand, some professors, particularly in the arts, carry out their work with their own two hands. Some professors have million dollar grants, while others make do with a few thousand, if anything. The university usually rewards professors who get large grants, if only because the university takes a cut from each grant, ranging from 10% to over 50%. Supposedly this is to provide for building maintenance, water, power, etc., but there is no way to account for or explain the variance. In many cases, professors with large grants would be better off working independently, and many in more applied fields do so, setting up their own research centres. The media is also impressed by big grants, as are other institutions trying to recruit new talent, or rather, more money. Colleagues, however, are not necessarily always as impressed by big grants per se (depends on the institutional culture), but are a little more critical and instead look for what people DO with those grants: publications and the impact of those publications.

     Publications are the final result of research. Research at universities is presumably for the public good, and hence an open, public endeavour. Research does not really exist until it has been published. A given paper can only be published once, or at least SHOULD only be published once, although sometimes you look at two papers by the same author and cannot see the difference.  As usual, it is easier to measure quantity rather than quality, so there is a tendency to publish lots of small papers rather than one that is a little more comprehensive, and there is another tendency to have several authors in every paper, even when the contribution of some "authors" has been minimal. High quality papers can bring prestige, larger grants and put the authors in a better negotiation position in their next performance/salary review.

     How good a paper is depends on its subsequent "impact". There are many measures of impact, but most widely accepted ones rely on how often a paper is subsequently cited. Most papers are NEVER cited.  Traditionally, selecting the best journal has been important because high-prestige journals have higher circulation, which means that papers therein are more likely to be read, and cited. However, that is changing in the electronic age; as long as the papers are listed in the main data bases, and electronically available, the actual journal is becoming an irrelevant relic form the past. In my view, the best researchers are the ones that produce work of high impact correcting for the amount of money they spend, the ones who maximize their "impact per dollar".

     Oddly, professors DO NOT get explicitly paid for publishing. This is particularly interesting because some journals are independently owned by for-profit publishing houses, and they can be extremely expensive, with yearly subscriptions in the thousands of dollars. Just ask the librarians! It is quite strange! Professors also publish book chapters, books, web sites, software, etc. None of this work is necessarily paid, although sometimes there is an honorarium of up to a few hundred dollars. They also review the work submitted for publication to journals, again, without getting a cent for their work.

     Occasionally, a published work finds a sufficiently large audience (a text-book or a semi-popular book), and yes, the author does reap some financial benefits, but otherwise, just because you can buy a book does not mean that any of your money is reaching the author. Oddly enough, when assessing advancements and promotions, non-academic publications, which usually have wider audiences, are often given less weight than peer-reviewed publications, which are written for and read by only a handful of individuals across the globe. It is yet another quirk of the system.
 
TENURE.-No discussion about the academic profession is complete without mentioning tenure. What is it? Well, it is somewhat similar to becoming a "partner" at a law firm. After about 5 years on the job (more or less, quite variable!), that is, a real, regular job, not a one-year-at-a time contract type of job, a professor undergoes something called tenure review. Essentially, the professor puts together a dossier that shows how well he/she has been doing the job for the past several years, and how much more the department and the university will benefit by keeping him/her around. This dossier is then reviewed by tenured colleagues within the department (mostly), some from outside the department but within the university, and maybe external reviewers (I was one once). NOBODY, not even external reviewers, gets paid for doing this work, which is really strange. It is an overly involved process, but basically, if the professor has been doing the job relatively well over the past few years, according to local standards, tenure will be granted. The point "according to local standards" is important; at high quality, research-intensive institutions it means having published a couple of books and having many high-quality papers, but elsewhere it might just mean publishing one or two papers and being popular with students.

     Once a professor gets tenure he/she has a secure job for the rest of his/her working life. Except for acts nearly criminal in nature, in theory, a tenured professor cannot be fired, EVER. Tenure has many potential consequences. The logic behind tenure is that it allows professors to engage in research that is more risky (in the sense of not yielding publishable results), work that is unpopular (either within the field or to society at large), or work that is critical of the department, university, or the various levels of government or other "powerful" organizations. It allows the professor to fully express him/herself and engage in daring research WITHOUT the fear of professional retribution. It is somewhat similar to being given (or "earning" some would say) a lifetime appointment to the Canadian Senate, or the USA Supreme Court, which SUPPOSEDLY allows senators and judges to vote with their consciences instead of along party lines. Of course, just like the Senate and the Supreme court, tenure also has some drawbacks.

     Upon getting tenure, a few professors do shift their research slightly, indeed taking on a new attitude and boldness with their work. They might test unpopular or fringe ideas, conduct the work they "have always wanted to do", or shift their work to new topics. The vast majority continue as if nothing had happened, which make us wonder why have tenure at all. Some professors relax a little and lower their productivity, if perhaps subconsciously. Finally, a few professors, secure in the fact that they have a job for life, lose their drive and ambition, their productivity decreases significantly and eventually become known as "Professor Deadwood". The department fruitlessly tries to get its money's worth by assigning these professors a greater teaching load, usually 1st year courses. Fruitlessly, I say, because the purpose of university was to get exposed to people who actively engage in research, was it not? Every large department has a few tenured professors of each type.
   

     There are always reformers that want to abolish tenure, but they seldom take into account that professor salaries would have increase so much as to perhaps make university unaffordable. Maybe that is too late; government policies have driven tuition to unaffordable levels already. From an economic perspective, tenure is perhaps the reason why professors get paid so little relative to other professionals with their level of training and responsibility. Job security comes at a cost. Other systems have been suggested, such as rolling 5-year contracts, but tenure is still the norm throughout North America, but it is more variable elsewhere in the western world.

     The job also entails other bits and pieces, such as service to the community, to the institution, to the field, etc. Anyway, if you are more interested you might want to read "Academic Duty" by Donald Kennedy, or check out the FORUM section of the Chronicle of Higher Education but I hope this gives an idea of what is it professors do. Why they do it? Well, nobody knows!​