[daxelrod]

> And I wonder why in the world they took jobs as lecturers. If you don't have a passion for teaching, why take a job that pays substantially less than what you get in industry?

I don't know about this specific situation, but many professors enjoy and are good at research and see teaching as necessary overhead in their jobs. Professors tend to have much more freedom than people doing research in industry and for some people that's worth it.

[Merciernmon]

Yes, that is the standard bargain for tenure-track professors at U.S. research universities. You pay a little bit of teaching time (0-2 courses a semester) and get an abundance of research time. Tenure decisions are mostly based on research success. Teaching plays almost no role. Essentially, you're on a six-year clock to get X number of top journal publications. That provides a massive incentive for professors to focus almost exclusively on research over teaching.

PhD students face similar incentives. While they might have to teach a course in order to earn their stipend, their job market success is based almost entirely on their dissertation. Every hour teaching is an hour not writing.

Adjunct professors ("lecturers") are different. Just speculating but... some professional flaws might only be tolerated in a university environment. You can go years as a lecturer without returning class quizzes. You can't go a month as a SWE without returning your boss's emails.

Caveat: American economist with experience working for governments and universities. Other countries may be different.

[Calavar]

For an assistant prof, sure, this makes sense. But the people I had mind were lecturers - non-tenure track, non-core faculty who didn't do research and had almost no room for upward mobility.