[ibsulon]

"Publish or perish."

The dirty secret of universities: the job of most faculty isn't to teach, it's to research and bring prestige to the university. In the sciences, research is a byproduct of bringing in money, so research grants are the most important part.

Thus, on top of those three classes (two at the university I live near) they're expected to put in full time work on their research.

From what I see, it's about a 60 hour average week in the social sciences. That dips to 35-40 in the summers.

[mklg1266]

Professors work. A lot. Maybe not the ancient tenured ones, and not all of them, but the majority. It is far from a 40-hour job. And in the hard sciences/engineering/computer science, they could definitely be making more money in industry.

[pw0ncakes]

My point is that professors aren't overcompensated, because they "bring in" about $100k per class of tuition, which is about $667/hour-- although obviously deductions need to be made for administrative costs, classes are the main service-- assuming 150 hours of work per class, but are paid substantially less.

The fact that they also do research as a full-time job means that they're even less overcompensated (by which I mean, "more undercompensated").