This might be a GQ.
I’ve been a watcher of Big Bang Theory since it started and I enjoy the show a lot. But once in a while as I’m watching a thought comes to me. Isn’t it generally part of a university professor’s job to teach? That’s what the word means after all. Not one of the PHDs in the group teach except for the rare lecture.
I do not have a PHD, but I do live in a college town.
Peace,
mangeorge
I’ve only caught bits and pieces of the show, so I’m not the most qualified to answer, but heck, let’s take a stab at it. I would guess that unless any of them are explicitly stated to be professors, they may not teach a regular class, but are merely guest lecturers. PhD != professor.
Who say’s their not teaching?
The show only shows what happens to them on Thursday night; they probably have classes Monday, Wednesday, and Friday this term.
I’ve never seen the show, so I went to Wikipedia. None of the characters is described there as a “professor.” Are they so described in the show itself?
Many professors don’t teach. Professor is an academic rank - Assistant, Associate, or Full. It doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with teaching. Many professors spend their time engaged in research.
That said, the show is not written by people who know much about academia. For instance, Amy recently became a consultant on a project at Sheldon’s institution. Beccoming a consultant on a project would not involve actually moving temporarily to that institution.
There’s been a lot of discussion about this over the years. Most people fall into one of two camps. Some say that they do teach, but the show doesn’t want to bother with classes. The others say that universities like Caltech have research professors, who aren’t permanent tenured staff but work on individual projects.
Both sides have problems. Nobody can imagine Sheldon teaching regular classes or the others never mentioning the subject. But there was a big episode last year about their being in competition for a tenure spot.
I’m in a third camp that points out that every single detail about the tenure competition was nonfactual, and that nobody can know the answer because the show treats the school as background comedy. But fans must wank.
I’ll dispute Hector over what I think is more like an actual fact. Amy is doing her research now at Caltech for six months. The mechanism behind it was never mentioned, but she’s being treated even by other faculty as someone who is there and working on campus. Her status at the two schools will stay mysyterious unless somebody suddenly decides it’s part of a plotline.
Actually, on one or two occasions Leonard and Sheldon have been shown talking to classrooms of students. However, they are clearly unused to it, unpracticed, and very bad at it. It is obviously not part of their normal job. It is true that at an elite institution like Calech (where the show is supposedly set), some of the top research professors might have a very light load of undergraduate teaching, but even then they would be spending a lot of their time directing the research of graduate students and post-doctoral researchers. Furthermore, even if they only fairly rarely lectured to undergraduates, they would be very practiced at giving talks at scientific conferences. Leonard and SHeldon clearly are not practiced public speakers.
This is one of the reasons (though not the only one) that I have argued, in other threads on Big Bang Theory, that they are probably not supposed to be professors, but post-doctoral fellows. In fact, most of the nitty-gritty of university scientific research, these days, is done by post-doctoral fellows, and each actual professor is likely to have several of them working under him (as well as quiet a few grad students working for their Ph.D.). Most science professors have spent a few years as post-docs before getting faculty “tenure track” positions, but many research scientists, even some quite distinguished ones, spend their whole career as post-docs, often moving from one lab to another every few years (as post-doc appointments are normally temporary contracts of two years or so, which may or may not be renewed at the same location). Although their research will be at least nominally under the supervision of a professor, in practice many post-docs may be running their own research program to a considerable degree. Some of them may do a bit of teaching, and help with supervising PhD. students’ research, but it is not really their primary responsibility, and I think few do very much teaching of undergraduates, and many or most probably do none at all.
i am sure no-one will be surprised to learn that the show does not give an entirely realistic or consistent portrayal of what a university scientist’s working life is really like. For one thing, both post-docs and faculty would spend a lot of their time working with grad students, but we never seem to see any of those at all, and when we see Leonard’s lab (the only lab we ever do seem to see), he seems to be alone in it. In reality, although a post-doc might have his own lab space, it would also contain grad students and lab technicians working under him. Nevertheless, given the way that the lives of Leonard, Sheldon, Raj, and other characters such as Kripke and Lesley Winkel, are depicted, the most plausible interpretation of their status is that they are post-docs, possibly being groomed to eventually become faculty. Caltech, in particular, is full of post docs - it may well have more of them than it does undergraduates - most of whom will eventually end up as faculty somewhere (not necessarily at Caltech). (Howard is another matter. He is presumably a a salaried NASA engineer.)
If they are not described as professors, I would assume they are postdoctoral researchers. Many academics may spend many years after getting their Ph.D. working in non-teaching research positions on grants held by senior faculty. I know several colleagues who have been post-docs for a decade or more. Some people seem to be permanent post-docs.
ETA: I see that njtt has given much more detailed information on this possibility. The characters’ status seems much more like post-docs than any other academic position.
They’re full time researchers, not post-docs or professors. That’s pretty normal for a big research university like CalTech.
It’s been mentioned that Sheldon occasionally teaches a class, which would be normal for someone in that position.
ETA: Howard is shown working with NASA JPL, but since they’re administered by CalTech he could spend time in both locations.
It may depend on the nature of the appointment. In the department I once worked in, there could be teaching, research, and extension responsibilities but of varying amounts (0% to 100%).
A professor might have a 75% research and 25% teaching appointment or a 100% extension appointment, for example (I think one full professor never taught a class in the almost ten years I was there). Some teaching requirements might be met by teaching a class on some advanced topic every other year that only a handful of grad students would even take.
Adjunct professor: pure teaching, ramen dinner.
Most professors (assistant, associate, full): some portion of teaching, research, scrambling for grants. Some love teaching, others unfortunately treat it as an unnecessary annoyance, and do the bare minimum. Assistant professors generally don’t have tenure, but many are working towards it.
Research professor: almost exclusively research. May also have the same title as above, e.g. assistant professor. Sometimes a position given at the beginning of a career, but often a prolific researcher may do this.
Post doc: similar to research professor, may be called on to cover their advisor’s classes once in awhile.
Although the university I worked at had a Nobel Prize winner as an adjunct professor. He worked at a nearby government research institute. He got to be a professor with, I imagine, very limited responsibilities and the physics department got to say they had a Nobel Prize winner on the faculty. I wasn’t in the physics department, so I don’t know what he did or if he had grad students off-campus.
My own program had something similar–an off-campus Nobel Prize winner on the faculty but he didn’t take any students (at least during my time or several years prior). It was about having his name recognition.
If you are referring to me, it was clearly stated that she was serving as a Consultant. Perhaps disciplines differ, but in my experience, someone with a faculty position at one institution serving as a Consultant on a research project at another institution involves a few hours or a few days out of a year. These might be roles on advisory committees, stats or design consultation… Going to work on another project would seem something more like having a Co-investigator role. Picking up altogether and going to work at another institution seems like a sabbatical.
Of course, the “work” she was doing involved showing pictures to a trained monkey and verbally recording her impressions of his reactions, which is of course complete nonsense.
My wife’s aunt is a pretty well known academic in her field. She doesn’t teach any classes at her university, but rather is engaged in research and works with grad students.
Based on the information that has been revealed on the show, it seems pretty clear that Leonard, Sheldon and Raj are research faculty: non-tenure track, non-teaching, research-only faculty. Key features of such positions include:
[ul]
[li]Not being tenured. Research faculty are not tenure-track, which is why the guys were competing to secure a tenure-track position when one opened up.[/li][li]No teaching. Unless they want to. Some research faculty will teach a course here and there, but it’s normally not part of their job.[/li][li]Still part of the faculty. Unlike post-docs, research faculty are usually fully part of a department’s faculty. Hence the guys’ interacting with their department head, rather than, e.g., a post-doc adviser.[/li][li]On soft money. Because most research faculty don’t teach, they typically are not paid from a department’s primary budget; instead, they are expected to secure their own funding through grants (that’s what “soft money” means). Hence Raj’s scrambling to find a new project when his old project failed.[/li][/ul]
And the multiple fundraising episodes they’ve had.
By the way, in the most recent episode (Season 7, Episode 5, “The Workplace Proximity”), Sheldon was as usual wearing a short-sleeve t-shirt with some sort of nerdy picture on it. But when he was in the cafeteria, it struck me that this was very casual, juvenile dress for a university faculty member. Does this bother anyone else?
Could anything be more ridiculous than the bow ties that so many wear?
Maybe she was on a lunch (or, given the time of day, dinner) break and she was just doing her hobby–freaking out monkeys (and Sheldon). 
No. Plenty of faculty dress down when they’re not interacting with students. I often wear t-shirts in the summer, though not during the school year when I may be interacting with undergraduates. Sheldon’s position, on the other hand, is one where he probably never interacts with students. So it’s not surprising at all to me that he wouldn’t dress up.