This is a response from a Furd Asst. Prof what they actually do. Notice the discussion on actually teaching. This time priority is exactly what Governors like Jerry Brown are complaining about, but its a direct conflict with a research-oriented university like Cal.
What's it like to be a professor?
Answer below by Jay Wacker, former professor.
TL;DR: It's varied and requires a lot of different skills that I didn't learn in school.
I get to work on what I want to work on. I get to choose my own hours. But there are a lot of responsibilities beyond simply doing research and teaching. What these are depends on the university and field of study.
My life as a junior professor at Stanford (up for tenure in the fall) consists of the following.
Tenure
Stanford is a research university. All tenure decisions are based off your research reputation in your respective community. You have to be competent in the classroom and reasonably collegial to your colleagues, but in the end, the cliche of "publish or perish" is true. in the end, the cliche of "publish or perish" is true.
Tenure is an up-or-down decision. You get it and you have a job for life, or you don't and you must move after the following year (i.e. you're fired). Stanford's tenure system is a real review they send 15 to 20 unsolicited letters to senior members of your community, asking about your standing in the community.
Research
So life as a junior (untenured) professor is really about trying to build a record that will get you tenure. If you see young professors looking tired and stressed, that's why.
Writing research papers to be first published on preprint servers and then in proper journals is a major component of research. What goes into that research obviously varies a lot by field; since I'm a theoretical physicist, there are a lot of pen and paper calculations.
When you submit a paper to journal, it gets sent out to be refereed (i.e. reviewed for quality). This can be trivial or a pain depending on the situation. Sometimes, the anonymous referee rubber stamps a paper and other times they give feedback. Recently, I had a three month battle with a referee over frequentist vs. Bayesian statistics. I eventually got frustrated and sent it off to another journal (equally prestigious), which accepted the paper without complaints.
You also have to be a referee. The general rule of thumb is to wait for one or two rounds of harassment before you respond. Otherwise, you'll have more and more reviews to do.
Ultimately, the research is evaluated by overall impact, which is measured through the above letters and through the more objective (though overly simplistic) citation count.
Travel
One major component for building an international reputation in my field is traveling. You travel to give seminars and colloquium and also go to conferences and workshops. I spend about three to four months a year traveling on a shoe-string budget, and am about to hit 1 million miles on American Airlines.
Public speaking
Public speaking is a huge factor, and giving concise, entertaining presentations is important. I tend to give about 20 hour-long presentations per year on recent research projects, and another five to 10 special topic presentations. Summarizing your work well in person is one of the key components to getting more citations.
Grants
Getting money is a big factor in tenure, so you apply for a lot of grants. Government grants are typically 10-to-20 page applications filled with budgets, descriptions of research, etc. You have to follow the rules to a T think of it as filling out your taxes the language is obtuse and confusing, and not getting a specific grant could sink your career or cause you to lay off staff. Grant applications usually take 100 to 200 hours the first time you apply, and then 50 to 100 hours the next time.
Mentorship and personnel management
For most professors in the sciences at research universities, your research is the raison d'etre for your position, so you have to be performing research constantly. Most people develop a team consisting of graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and technical staff all of whom you're paying off of the grants you've received.
This aspect of the job requires a lot of hiring. When postdoctoral positions become available, we get 400 to 600 applications for one to three positions. Postdoctoral positions are very expensive, so postdoctoral hiring is taken very seriously.
Letter writing
In order to get the best people, you have to develop the existing researchers which means getting them jobs. So you have to spend a lot of time writing letters of recommendation (usually in the fall). I currently write about 15 to 20 letters per year. If you say the wrong words, it can cost researchers the possibility of getting faculty positions thereby destroying your ability to hire the best people in the future.
Graduate student mentorship
Graduate student researchers are important for most professors' research. In three years you have to bring them from knowing next to nothing to being independent researchers: This requires a lot of mentorship. You have to tailor projects to their abilities and find out how much they can do before they become overwhelmed. You have to lift them up when they hit a wall and don't feel like they can go on (it happens to every graduate student at some point and frequently at multiple points). You have to keep them excited when they get burnt out on a project halfway through it.
Most graduate students get livable stipends these days. That means more grant money. At Stanford, we have to pay for their tuition for four years, which brings a fully loaded student up to $80,000 each year.
Local/national/international committee work
There also is committee work and meetings. Once you become faculty, you are a manager of the department and wider university. You have faculty meetings, committee meetings, etc. I'm on a few fellowship selection committees, the graduate admissions committee frequently, and am a pre-major adviser this year. There also are faculty hiring committees, which are very political and can drain a huge amount of time.
Teaching
Finally, there is teaching. I teach one to two quarters per year. I've taught a mixture of graduate and undergraduate classes.
Teaching is fun, and I think a fair fraction of faculty would love it, but the limited time available to prepare a course really prevents most of us from spending as much time as we would like on it. I find it fulfilling to be up in front of the classroom, writing lectures and designing problem sets, but, unfortunately, I only can put in 10 to 15 hours per week into a course.
I posted this not because I have any new insights, but because this is the debate that is occurring about the direction of UC campuses. Thoughts?
What's it like to be a professor?
Answer below by Jay Wacker, former professor.
TL;DR: It's varied and requires a lot of different skills that I didn't learn in school.
I get to work on what I want to work on. I get to choose my own hours. But there are a lot of responsibilities beyond simply doing research and teaching. What these are depends on the university and field of study.
My life as a junior professor at Stanford (up for tenure in the fall) consists of the following.
Tenure
Stanford is a research university. All tenure decisions are based off your research reputation in your respective community. You have to be competent in the classroom and reasonably collegial to your colleagues, but in the end, the cliche of "publish or perish" is true. in the end, the cliche of "publish or perish" is true.
Tenure is an up-or-down decision. You get it and you have a job for life, or you don't and you must move after the following year (i.e. you're fired). Stanford's tenure system is a real review they send 15 to 20 unsolicited letters to senior members of your community, asking about your standing in the community.
Research
So life as a junior (untenured) professor is really about trying to build a record that will get you tenure. If you see young professors looking tired and stressed, that's why.
Writing research papers to be first published on preprint servers and then in proper journals is a major component of research. What goes into that research obviously varies a lot by field; since I'm a theoretical physicist, there are a lot of pen and paper calculations.
When you submit a paper to journal, it gets sent out to be refereed (i.e. reviewed for quality). This can be trivial or a pain depending on the situation. Sometimes, the anonymous referee rubber stamps a paper and other times they give feedback. Recently, I had a three month battle with a referee over frequentist vs. Bayesian statistics. I eventually got frustrated and sent it off to another journal (equally prestigious), which accepted the paper without complaints.
You also have to be a referee. The general rule of thumb is to wait for one or two rounds of harassment before you respond. Otherwise, you'll have more and more reviews to do.
Ultimately, the research is evaluated by overall impact, which is measured through the above letters and through the more objective (though overly simplistic) citation count.
Travel
One major component for building an international reputation in my field is traveling. You travel to give seminars and colloquium and also go to conferences and workshops. I spend about three to four months a year traveling on a shoe-string budget, and am about to hit 1 million miles on American Airlines.
Public speaking
Public speaking is a huge factor, and giving concise, entertaining presentations is important. I tend to give about 20 hour-long presentations per year on recent research projects, and another five to 10 special topic presentations. Summarizing your work well in person is one of the key components to getting more citations.
Grants
Getting money is a big factor in tenure, so you apply for a lot of grants. Government grants are typically 10-to-20 page applications filled with budgets, descriptions of research, etc. You have to follow the rules to a T think of it as filling out your taxes the language is obtuse and confusing, and not getting a specific grant could sink your career or cause you to lay off staff. Grant applications usually take 100 to 200 hours the first time you apply, and then 50 to 100 hours the next time.
Mentorship and personnel management
For most professors in the sciences at research universities, your research is the raison d'etre for your position, so you have to be performing research constantly. Most people develop a team consisting of graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and technical staff all of whom you're paying off of the grants you've received.
This aspect of the job requires a lot of hiring. When postdoctoral positions become available, we get 400 to 600 applications for one to three positions. Postdoctoral positions are very expensive, so postdoctoral hiring is taken very seriously.
Letter writing
In order to get the best people, you have to develop the existing researchers which means getting them jobs. So you have to spend a lot of time writing letters of recommendation (usually in the fall). I currently write about 15 to 20 letters per year. If you say the wrong words, it can cost researchers the possibility of getting faculty positions thereby destroying your ability to hire the best people in the future.
Graduate student mentorship
Graduate student researchers are important for most professors' research. In three years you have to bring them from knowing next to nothing to being independent researchers: This requires a lot of mentorship. You have to tailor projects to their abilities and find out how much they can do before they become overwhelmed. You have to lift them up when they hit a wall and don't feel like they can go on (it happens to every graduate student at some point and frequently at multiple points). You have to keep them excited when they get burnt out on a project halfway through it.
Most graduate students get livable stipends these days. That means more grant money. At Stanford, we have to pay for their tuition for four years, which brings a fully loaded student up to $80,000 each year.
Local/national/international committee work
There also is committee work and meetings. Once you become faculty, you are a manager of the department and wider university. You have faculty meetings, committee meetings, etc. I'm on a few fellowship selection committees, the graduate admissions committee frequently, and am a pre-major adviser this year. There also are faculty hiring committees, which are very political and can drain a huge amount of time.
Teaching
Finally, there is teaching. I teach one to two quarters per year. I've taught a mixture of graduate and undergraduate classes.
Teaching is fun, and I think a fair fraction of faculty would love it, but the limited time available to prepare a course really prevents most of us from spending as much time as we would like on it. I find it fulfilling to be up in front of the classroom, writing lectures and designing problem sets, but, unfortunately, I only can put in 10 to 15 hours per week into a course.
I posted this not because I have any new insights, but because this is the debate that is occurring about the direction of UC campuses. Thoughts?