"An average tenured professor works about 20 weeks of a year."

That sounds like a provincial UK university in the 1950s to me. This book appears to be, shall we say, a little polemical!

(1) University professors have the World’s Highest-paid “part-time job”;

(2) Teaching becomes increasingly easier over time, with little preparation needed;

(3) For the graduate faculty, RA/TAs do all the hard work of grading and often tutoring;

(4) An average professor writes research papers that have little to no real application. Most teaching faculty write papers for “appearance only”;

(5) Adjunct Faculties bridge the gap and increase productivity at a lower cost, with a little solid distinction between a tenured vs. adjunct faculty from the standpoint of the student.

These are very interesting questions and, while I don't have an iron-clad answer supported by stats, my own anecdotal experiences are coming out! While I could absolutely try to find some statistical support in response, question (1), (3), and (4) come to mind. Being relatively new in academia (>5 years post-PhD), I have worked with many colleagues widely decorated in my field (Psychology) and all still pump every minute of every day into their roles. While I have some interaction with others, I am fortunate to say that drive and motivation is a quality my colleagues have in spades. Equally, one thing that studies exploring (1) should address (acknowledging that some may), is the many hours performing administrative tasks that occur outside of the contact hours. My timetable, for example, includes 18hours direct tuition with students, but the added number of hours spent on committees, administration, preparation for class, or worrying about some students who aren't showing up to classes, are sometimes overlooked. Time for research is another element (4), with some disparities based on discipline, and the theory/practice divide that exists. I always found it difficult to read a paper that I couldn't apply to my own practice - "how do these findings influence my teaching or daily routine?". A physics paper that aims to model satellite trajectories may seem so far removed from my practice, but if that satellite was studying global warming, for example, this paper would have a significant trickle down into my practice and work (I used a similar example with my students this week when exploring the concept of 'critical thinking'). So, while a professor may write a paper that has no application, it's possible that you are not the intended reader OR, haven't broken through the fortressed walls of your discipline yet.

In regards to (2), yes. But, in a rapidly changing field, we need to continuously revise our work. In psychology, for example, there was a huge HUGE publicised Replication Crisis", where classical experiments were revisited or their methods were duplicated and different results were found. One argument I have for this is that this could be a fantastic example of how societies and cultures change over time (equally, it could be due to inaccurate reporting from the original papers, but see above where I mention critical thinking!). Professors NEED to continuously revise their lesson plans, almost as much as students need to ask "Why is this true?" or "Why is this false?". Experience makes teaching and preparation much easier and we can try out new approaches to see what works. Towards the end of the last academic year I purposely walked into a class without any preparation - I said this to the students, and wrote "digital media influences behaviour" on a document that I projected onto the screen and sat in silence. After 5 minutes, one of my students put up their hand and told me they disagreed, then another disagreed about that disagreement - the resulting conversation and debate could spark the development of a new module on my course. This can be a dangerous game to play, and this topic is something I research extensively into and could guide students in directions. Look up constructivist teaching, you should get some insights here.

I have been the RA/TA that grades papers, and was fortunate that my colleagues (now friends) were (and are) significant influencers to who I am as an academic. I'm not saying all RA/TAs are in a positively nurturing position, some aren't. At all. There are some RA/TAs used as cannon-fodder, some leave academia as a result. Some may be still waiting on a reply from their supervisors for an email sent weeks ago. Some may still be waiting for feedback on a draft chapter, paper, presentation. The grading I did was tough, but I was given support to an extent. I learned a lot in the first few months, mostly what not to do. Policies and procedures are different across various institutes that, if an RA/TA (even PhD candidate) are trying to raise some funds, it's incredibly difficult to navigate. Academia is competitive and can be ruthless, and all of these are things academics need to address.

To revisit (4) I am trying to write between my teaching and "other" hours, but it is difficult. I have recently begun cross-discipline writing with other academics and have a few publications completed and/or pending - and this is something that took me a while to realise. Other disciplines exist. But to also revisit the satellite and fortress example above, I think it could be useful.

As for (5), I one had a week where I had 36 hours contact time, as I was spread across 4 campuses. My salary that year was €78k+, but with tax, only saw €34k of that (or there abouts). This broke me. In that year, my relationships suffered, I gained a lot of weight that I am only now starting to drop, and my general life experience was reduced to locking myself in my room until friends drew me out of it. THIS, is something I know still exists for countless individuals working as an adjunct or associate lecturer/professor. I have no idea how to fix it, other than recognising it is a possible issue within your faculty and reach out to individuals that may be experiencing something like I (and maybe you) did. Hopefully, another answerer to your post will give some further suggestion.

As for COVID, I have no idea - and it is something that concerns me. COVID has shuffled society and education at every level. I'm genuinely concerned for my colleagues and my students, in terms of their productivity and also their day-to-day functioning. We now teach to blank screens (there are some great suggestions of asking students to put up pictures, etc as a way to rehumanise the dehumanising experience). We are now undergoing a 2nd wave in Ireland and, from an academic perspective, have already put in place the facilities for remote teaching and learning. I can see this being the norm for some time and am working on a few (hopefully practice-based) papers that I hope will help in due course.

This was a longer rant than intended, apologies!

agree with @ Dean P McDonnell and Brian Poole

Dean P McDonnell

What an insightful response. Personally, I am not in support of the remarks by George Freidman except his hypothesis on indicated immense changes within 10 years (or maybe less in time). Something is growing, that what I can sense too, especially in the field of technology (as I am from an engineering background). Digital learning along with recent virtual real-time learning is growing rapidly and its effectivity is challenging the old way of classroom learning significantly. This has become more visible and practised in this COVID situation. Here, at QUT, Australia, we conducted a survey where student preference goes for online-based teaching over class-room based teaching although we are good to go to the classes.

In concern of the research, a good part of research activities by academics are not well-defined in professional practice. Lots of efforts by academic researchers are not weighted as paid labour but voluntary, for example, the journal reviewing work. It is nearly a complete voluntary work, and I don't know why! Similarly, fund applications and related works are assigned to an individual's effort; are not attached to the academic's (certainly not to adjunct, sessional, casual academic which nowadays are preferred posts for unis) job responsibility. So all those efforts remains to underline and not visible to others as they are not paid responsibility. If you going to compare this with industry research practice, you would find that they are different and their fund application process is included to their day to day work responsibility.

This is how this profession limits their domain in terms of productivity (those days, the outook of productivity is measured by money/earning, you will not disagree I hope). And as a result, huge of workloads are imposed upon the academics and their works are not entitled although such works are somehow in effect to the growth of the society/country.

The academic year will be 12 months long and combine the best of in-person and online ... What will your university 'look like' after COVID-19 recedes into the background? What is the vision for your future students? How is ... and procedures were changed to reflect the realities of the post-pandemic world

Hi, I believe that the future will be dramatically different where both academics and academicians both have to change their approach.

As a part of the teaching fraternity, we need to be more evolved in terms of learning new skills to be effective for the changing needs of all the stakeholders.

Human potential is the best we have in the world. The future of Academics after Post-Covid Changed Reality will be a courageous response to the new normal. Our human family will rise up courageously to the challenges and as Dean P McDonnell has expressed it so eloquently there is going to be very many significant outcomes. Teaching is going to assume variety of shapes and colours. There is going to be an advancement of culture in the spirit of global solidarity.

I think that Covid has drastically changed the way of life for all people. For academics it changed their way of teaching and their way of doing research. Academic life will be different in terms of interaction with their students because in large group online teaching student participation is very limited and even learning from their peers as it was in face-to-face classes is not given, at least that is the case with my college education student courses.

I even don't know whether professors will be prepared for the next 10 years. Tha way of teaching is changing, and most of them don't accept it, or don't note.

Covid has initiated tecchnological discruptions and if we look into this, it is a paradigm shift in the field of education. So, there will be some new addition and alteration in the current system and we need to accept those as change is only the constant!

CoVid 19 pandemic has brought a paradigm shift in overall teaching learning experiences. However, the efficiency of learning through virtual means mainly the class outside the classroom need additional years to get well adapted in internet network and gadgets unfriendly region in different parts of the world. In this connection ten years of timeline personally seems impractical. Additionally the major challenges in this pandemic have been faced immensely by the subjects demanding laboratory facilities to learn through hands on means on a real-time basis. The comprehensive future learning seems to be better posed for academicians or researchers having an expertise over computers. Further remarks made by George Freidman perhaps on the widespread pertaining issues in the academics has been totally a burdensome for faculty at UG level of teaching in comparison to post graduate university learning. Further he hypothesized the gradual decline in class preparation which may be due to digital stored data power point materials used frequently in comparison to chalk board teaching approaches mainly by the university faculties. This overuse of digitized data through power point presentation has drastically reduce the learning enthusiasm and critical thinking ability amongst the young eager learners. Further, too much dependency on UG learning shouldn't be thought a pinnacle degree for taking higher research in the university.

Hi Fida Hasan,

As a teacher I have been dabbling in the virtual platform for more than 10 years.

Practically, this scenario of the pandemic has facilitated the acceleration of educational processes through the tools of virtuality, involving this current generation and those of us who are in this transition process.

Therefore, I see it as an advantage. Just take into account the social strata that do not have full resources: computers, internet signal, to mention.

Many lazy University professors will lose jobs as their teaching duty can be grabbed by the best professor elsewhere as courses could be offered online.

Very interesting question. I believe that our future will definitely look very different. The COVID 19 pandemic gave us a glimpse of how its gonna look like 5-10 years from now. It forced a lot of academics and teachers to adapt well to the situation. We moved traditional teaching to online platforms and so our teaching approach and methodologies also have to change. Future academics and researches should also be innovative in terms of teaching and research. We now must have the proficiency not only on our lecture or content, but also how we execute them using ICT. The future of education is evolving and it's quite interesting and also exciting what's in store for us in the future.