I’m interested in becoming a college professor, however I am concerned that I would be spending too much time away from home. I want to be able to maximize the time I can spend with my children (I don’t even have children yet, I’m just planning ahead… don’t want to be absentee!)
Does the typically college professor (say, in Philosophy or Sociology) spend more than 40 hours away from home per week? I don’t think I would have a problem with working an extra hour or two in an office at home… I’m more concerned about coming home too late at night to spend any quality time with the kids.
My wife is a psychology prof and she puts in about 40 hours/week, sometimes more, sometimes less. Her schedule is flexible (except for class times) but with class prep, grading, committee work and research, flexibility doesn’t mean much. A lot of her work such as prep and grading can be done at home, but that just means she can work nights and weekends; it takes too much focus to count as quality time with the kids. Several of her peers put in the bare minimum and probably only work 20-30 hours per week, maybe less if they are an adjunct or emeritus prof who no longer does research and isn’t involved in department, college, or university committees.
I always laugh at the people who think a prof who teaches two three-hour courses only works six hours a week. That’s certainly not true of any but the very worst in the profession.
It depends somewhat on the field and the college. During the time you are working toward tenure, you will be expected to carry a full load of courses (2 or 3 per semester, sometimes more), plus advising duties, as well as be enormously productive on your own research and to maintain professional connections by going to conferences, etc. In addition, you will be asked to provide “community service” which consists of sitting on committees, attending student functions and stuff like that. The workload varies a lot depending on which committee.
On the plus side, you can generally call your own hours, outside of classes and scheduled office hours, and summers offer even more flexibility.
So, generally speaking, a young academic probably works more than 40 hours per week, sometimes much more, but is not tied to regular working hours. Working at home is also much more acceptable than it is in most jobs, as long as you stay in touch with your colleagues.
You have to figure in[ul]
[li]time actually spent in the classroom[/li][li]class preparation (writing up lecture notes, etc.)[/li][li]putting together and grading exams, papers, and other assignments[/li][li]time spent meeting with students outside the classroom (e.g. answering questions over course material, help with homework, academic advising, thesis advising or the eqivalent)[/li][li]faculty and committee meetings, and possibly other special responsibities like chairing ones department[/li][li]original research[/li][li]keeping abreast of new developments in ones field, by reading and possibly attending conferences[/li][/ul]
And the amount of time that all of these take up can vary widely, based on [ul]
[li]How much experience you have at teaching the courses you have to teach[/li][li]The subject and particular classes you teach[/li][li]How much your institution emphasizes research vs. teaching[/li][li]Whether you have student assistants, department secretaries, etc. to help you with things like grading and typing up exams[/li][li]How quickly and efficiently you do the things you have to do (e.g. are you a speed-reader?)[/li][li]How much you care about putting in the time and effort needed to do a good job vs. just doing the bare minimum to get by[/li][/ul]
and probably a bunch of other factors. As has been mentioned, some of what you have to do can be done at home, but this still doesn’t count as quality time spent with the family (although you could sit around the table doing your homework while the kiddies are doing theirs).
Let’s face it. If you are teaching freshmen and sophomores, your lesson plan will remain static until they replace your textbook. An accounting teacher will find little change in his field from year to year. A computer teacher teaching Java may find his course plan changing with every update to Java.
Really??? Hmm I wish they told me that when I went from adjunct prof. to associate…
Another Psych Prof. checking in. I work on average 50 hours a week, excluding weekend research, and a side design business. I get to my office on campus around 7:30 a.m. on a daily basis…Depending on the day of the week, I either have an hour to prepare for an 8:30 class or 2.5 hours to prepare for a 10 o’clock class. Usually, on a typical day, I have office hours before and immediately after my classes. Depending on what time of year it is i.e. around mid-terms or finals, I can be very busy during this time or not. [Mind you this is a gross generalization of what a typical day in the life of a college prof. is.
I usually leave campus on or near 5:30-ish. Students tend not to be in the building after 5, as it is an academic building, so there are only offices, and classrooms. No computers unless they are in an office. Even then, the only students usually there are T.A.'s and if there is a research project going on that requires students to stay after the last class.
I also happen to be on several committee’s like Micco’s wife. Some take up very little time, however, the admissions committee is a different story. That committee takes up quite a bit of time in August and again in the spring.
In all, you should be fine having a family and being an instructor at a college. You will find the right homeostasis with your SO once things get rolling.
This varies greatly, depending on how ambitious you are. If you’re primarily interested in teaching at a non-research oriented school, and you’re not currently bucking for tenure, then 40 hours/week is possible. If you’re a new hire at an upper-tier research institution, then between research, teaching, publishing, and grant proposals, you can expect to put in a lot of 60-80 hour weeks. Certainly, when I was looking for an academic position in computer science a few years back competition was extremely fierce, and I saw universities rejecting grad students who had publication portfolios that would have probably have earned them tenure a few years previously. The implication was that new hires would be working pretty much continously to build a tenure case.
You’ll probably work less at a four-year institution with no grad program, but you’re unlikely to be making a lot of money. And they may or may not have a tenure track, which may mean that you end up as an adjunct professor, never knowing from one year to another whether you’ll have have a job next semester.
No grad program means no graduate student teaching assistants, which means your workload may be much higher than at a similar institution with a grad program. IMWE (in my wife’s experience) prep for grad courses is sometimes easier than for undergraduate because the topics are much closer to her research level and she can assume a higher level of background knowledge. So, a freshman intro course with no TA could be a whole lot more work than a graduate seminar.
Many profs don’t let their TAs do a substantial amount of grading because they’re just not qualified, but TAs can still dramatically cut your workload. This can have a huge effect on your schedule even from semester to semester as the funding available for TAs fluctuates.
Look - work expands to fill the time, right? Even if you’re in a position that doesn’t require a lot of hours, on paper, you might very well find yourself devoting a good bit of time and attention to it. The amount of time you are required to spend in your job/profession/career is not the same as the amount that you DO spend. When I was younger, had younger kids, etc. I found that I didn’t want to spend too much time away from them, and ducked every committee meeting I could, devoted what time I had to to research, and focused primarily on my teaching. Now that I’m an old coot and my kids are older, my research takes more of my time, I’m willing to spend a few more hours on these pointless committees, and I can still focus on my teaching, which is still my main love. It’s very much a matter of where you are employed, but also a matter of how you choose to run your life. Good luck, grasshopper.
All true, but very broadly speaking, I was associating grad programs with research institutions, and a higher emphasis on publish-or-perish. So in a 4-year institution, your teaching responsibilities are much higher, as much as 4 classes/semester, with all the associated grading and scut work but (again, broadly speaking), you don’t have to fill the intersessions with frantic research, publishing, and pumping out grant proposals. Some 4 year colleges do require research from their faculty, but I don’t think with the same intensity as you’ll see at a graduate research institution.
Coincidentally, this question was considered in this article by John Sutherland in today’s Guardian. Currently the big-name professor of English literature at UCL in London, he did a stint at Caltech in the 1980s and uses this as the basis for estimating his average working week. His conclusion is that he was working an average of 58 hours a week: “[a]bout what I imagine the average bus driver does”.
My wife is at a “teaching university”. Her department has a graduate program (masters only). The “teaching university” part isn’t a formal designation, but it describes the situation where teaching is emphasized and profs get recognized for their teaching efforts as well as research in tenure and promotion. Her load is nominally 3/4 (three courses one semester, four the next) but her department is understaffed and she often teaches 4/4. She maintains a strong research program and supervises graduate student work. Some amount of research is required for promotion, but not the level that would be expected at a research university, and teaching evaluations from peers and students are considered as a big factor for tenure/promotion.
I have peers at first-tier research universities who are in a much more publish-or-perish environment. They typically teach a 1/2 load and devote much more time to research. Their tenure and promotion is based almost solely on their research as long as they didn’t completely shirk teaching. Based on my experience both with the universities I attended and the ones where my peers work now, teaching loads are much lighter at the top-level research universities. That doesn’t mean work load is lighter because profs are expected to produce significantly more research, but they aren’t distracted by those annoying classrooms.
So, basically I’m agreeing with what you said about teaching universities versus research universities, but the presence of a grad program is not necessarily the distinguishing feature. This is probably an important factor for the OP because most of the profs at both types of university could not survive in the other environment. Many of my wife’s colleagues do not have strong enough research to exist at a research university, and many of my top-notch research friends would have washed out on poor teaching evals at my wife’s university.