Comments on: University Teaching Loads

By: chris

chris — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 00:06:38 +0000

Philosophy, good but not great SLAC; all B.A. and B.S.

Normal 3/3 load over two 15 week semesters. In my dept, we typically each teach 3 intros a year, capped at 25. Upper level course have the same cap and frequently fill up. Seminars are 15 (one offered per year). Some departments have cut better deals over time and have lower caps; some just don’t attract as many students. Most courses are either 3 times a week for 50 minutes or twice for 75.

Chairs get load reductions to a max of 2 for the biggest departments. Scholarship is expected, especially for merit pay – definitely for tenure and promotion. Lots of college service in addition to ‘being avalaible’ for students.

By: Bill Phillips

Bill Phillips — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 23:03:56 +0000

Catalonia, Spain. Universitat de Barcelona, supposedly Spain’s top university. Full time lecturers are supposed to do both teaching and research. Teaching is 6 hours a week plus 2 hours tutorial. Administrative work takes up a great deal of time and pay is low. Expenses (conference fees, travel etc.) are unpaid unless directly tied to an officially approved ministry research project. Advising PhD students with their disserations is usually unpaid. Not surprisingly some students find it difficult to get an advisor. Many lecturers are part-time and VERY badly paid – between 150 and 550 euros a month, although their teaching and research load may be virtually the same as tenured lecturers.

By: anonlawprof

anonlawprof — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 19:53:33 +0000

Mid-ranked United States law school: teaching load requirement of 10 credit hours a year, which usually works out to a 1-2 load; in my case, 1 class during one 14-week semester, four hours a week classroom time, 2 classes the other semester, each with 3 hours a week classroom time. Mostly lecture classes, 30-100 students, and though we have no TAs, grading is usually done by one end-of-the-semester exam. Other US law schools may have teaching loads of up to 12 credit hours a year, meaning a 2/2 load. Research requirements, too, but still nothing to complain about.

By: Sid

Sid — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 16:26:18 +0000

Hong Kong, engineering. Average teaching load here for research faculty (at least in my particular department) comes to ~4 hours a week, 26 weeks a year (= 2.5 courses over 2 semesters a year), TAs to grade everything. Anywhere from ~1-6 RAs (independent of teaching load). We have it pretty sweet, I freely admit.

By: Bill Gholson

Bill Gholson — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 14:11:19 +0000

I teach at a regional, four year university in southern Oregon, USA. You might be astounded at my teaching load, but I thought I would add mine for your information. We have around 5,800 students , most all undergraduates, but we do have a smattering of master’s students in small programs thoughout the disciplines. We are one of a minority of universities which teach on the quarter system. We have three ten week terms; summer term is not administered through departments, but some faculty teach a course or run a program in the summer. Some publication would be nice, especially at the professor level, but our teaching expectations are so high that the university finds itself approving a wide range of activities which might count in the traditional publication part of professorship. Our teaching load is three courses per term or nine courses per year. We are expected to carry an advising load of around 20 students.

By: JJO

JJO — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 03:07:01 +0000

U.S., 2nd tier state university, but still research intensive.

It varies by department, but my department (history) just went down from a 2-3 to a 2-2 course load, which means two courses (15-90 students depending on level & popularity) per 16-week semester (that’s calendar weeks— we lose a week per semester due to holidays and another week for exams, so it’s 14 weeks of classes) @ 2.5 class hours per class per week, plus office hours. Pretty much no T.A.s (the few we have are reserved to help the term faculty [non-tenure track, hired to one- or three-year contracts] who teach 4-4 loads of the introductory surveys).

In addition, there are a variety of independent readings courses that Ph.D. students are required to take to prepare for their exams in their various fields (I usually have 2 per semester or so, which meet for about 2 hours every other week; sometimes I can combine the meetings other times I can’t), and supervising dissertations (which is hard to break down into a per-semester kind of deal; I currently have three students, who need advising and feedback ranging from none for a couple of months to intensive and constant for weeks at a time, depending on what’s going on with them). This work varies widely by field of specialization (nearly all of our Ph.D. students are Americanists, so the burden falls more heavily on us than on our non-U.S.-focused colleagues). These duties are not officially tallied in any way—some people do a lot, some people don’t do any.

Overall, although some elite schools have lighter loads, this is (and is designed to be) a relatively light and research friendly teaching load for the U.S. It’s pretty much standard for research intensive schools, but it’s much lower than average in the profession as a whole (particularly if you include the large numbers of non tenure track faculty whose labor is being sweated). Maintaining this load depends on research productivity: junior faculty automatically receive the 2-2 load, but senior faculty get reviewed for research productivity every three years to set their load, which can range from 2-2 to 3-3; but the expectation is that everyone except special cases should be doing enough to stick with the 2-2.

By: BillC

BillC — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 02:33:26 +0000

small midwestern US engineering college—considered a research school by the state but probably not by anyone else.

All tenure track positions in the state are contracted for 15 hours teaching per semester. At the research schools, 3 hours are given for research. Leaving nominally 12 class hours per semester, although real loads are more typically 7-10 hours. Class size varies, my discipline is small and many of the classes I teach are graduate classes, so 10 students is more or less my average. The difference between how much is taught and how much is contracted is often used as research grant matching money.

By: Jacob Christensen

Jacob Christensen — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 22:24:34 +0000

As a rule, positions at Swedish universities are full-time teaching positions where you will have to seek external financing for research. 4-5 courses per 20-week semester is a guideline, but you will see a lot of variation. Also, class sizes vary – I had anything between 125 and 5 students during my time in Sweden. And yes, generally you do your own marking/grading.

In Denmark, my guess is that 2 courses per 14-week semester plus tutoring of thesis work is more or less the standard.

Of course, there are faculty who rarely visit a lecture room. (Frustrated rant)Teaching undergraduates is often considered a waste of time by people who consider themselves researchers.(/Frustrated rant)

By: Clayton Littlejohn

Clayton Littlejohn — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 22:22:20 +0000

Lecturer at Southern Methodist University for the Department of Philosophy:
Semester is 15 weeks. Courses (typically) meet three times each week with 50 minutes per meeting. Four courses each semester with typical class size being 50 students. No TA support or research support. Lecturers typically try to do additional adjunct work elsewhere. Best avoided if possible.

Assistant Professor at Southern Methodist University:
Semester is 15 weeks. Courses (typically) meet twice a week with 80 minutes per meeting. Two courses each semester with typical class sizes being 25 students or less. Research support. Highly recommended.

By: dave

dave — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 12:26:40 +0000

I notice a trend amongst US academics to assume that everyone else knows what ‘2-2’, etc, means, when one of the points of the initial inquiry, I think, was to try to get people to spell out what such codes mean in terms of actual face-time with specified numbers of students. Just an observation…

By: Guru

Guru — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 10:01:23 +0000

India

Indian Institute of Technology (Technical University—most of the degrees are in Engineering and Technology—barring a few exceptions)

Undergrad teaching: two semesters per year; nearly 100-180 students per semester; 42 lecture classes; and six hours of tutorials/demonstration/labs for 10-15 students

Post-grad teaching—nearly 20 students per semester—42 lecture classes

Typical overall load per week—9-12 hours (typically, 3 hours of lectures for undergrads, 3 hours for post-grads, and 6 hours or lab/tutorials)

Every faculty is also expected to do research; guide a couple of M Tech students per year, a couple of undergraduates per year and two to three research students at any time

By: notsneaky

notsneaky — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 09:28:43 +0000

Basically somewhere between Gavin at 27 and Andrew at 31, but probably closer to Andrew. Economics.

By: Sebastian

Sebastian — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 09:09:18 +0000

Germany – not actually where I teach, but lots of friends and my dad:
7-8 weekly hours each semester.
Literally that would translate to 3-4 classes a semester, but there is some wiggle room – you can count your office hours as 1h and things like that. But most profs do teach 6 classes per year – usually one lecture each semester as well as 2 seminars.
And if you think that’s a ridiculous amount your damn right.

By: Tom Hurka

Tom Hurka — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 06:58:22 +0000

Largest Canadian research university, Philosophy.

2-2 load, semesters going down to 12 weeks, from 13, this coming fall. One of the four courses is a grad course, one is 250 students (all marking by TAs), the other two are 40 students each (no TA help).

By: Bert

Bert — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 04:42:16 +0000

Engineering, state university (non-PhD). 15 units standard load (equivalent to 5 typical classes) per 15 week semester, but one course typically taken off for service, so 4 courses per semester. Nominally 30 students per course, so large classes can count double. Such teaching assistants as are available are counted as reducing your load, i.e., teaching 60 students with a TA is equivalent to teaching 30 students without; in other words, the loading for TAs is calculated the same as for faculty. So in practice, hardly any TAs. Research funding can be used to lower your teaching load.