A question about University Professors

[Agentt]

A few youtubers I watch often comment on how they teach at a university "whenever they are free", some say they evaluate exam sheets to get some extra money sometimes. I wanted to know like...what is going on?

 

[Deleted member 146224]

Universities can either employ lecturers full time, where they are usually obligated to do other stuff outside from lecturing (conducting research, publishing papers, etc.) or they can hire someone for specific elective or program and the job usually ends there and is more like a gig. Usually masters degree is the only requirement.

 

[BearlyAlive]

They either act as assistant professors and help give lectures or help the professor create and/or grade the exams, depending on where they work they might not even need a degree if they're employed directly by the prof. Marking sheets is pretty much slave labor, tho.

 

[melchi]

Grad students tend to do grading for tenured professors. Part time professors tend to have to grade their own tests.

 

[NotaNuffian]

So it is a part time job with the part-timer requiring a degree of said class as well as the fact that they understand what they are substituting for and probably has the materials from the actual teachers.

But still, I do not understand that anyone, anyone can just walk into a school and say "hey, I have a degree, I want to be a part time substitute teacher" and the school goes "sure" when they are not looking for substitute teachers if they have a full roster.

 

[Agentt]

a part time job

Part time professors

more like a gig

I had no idea professors could be part time!

 

[miyoga]

Essentially, if you don't have at least a master's degree in the field you want to teach in, neither a 2-year college nor a 4-year university will onboard you as any kind of teaching staff. The exceptions lie in the TAs because they are chosen by the professor of the course as his/her assistants. Furthermore, they tend to also be enrolled in master's-or-higher programs and have more advanced knowledge than the people that they would be teaching. Because they are working for the prof, they also get tuition assistance through the university and can overlook a student's visa status as international students typically can't work outside of university-provided jobs. Even those have to be directly through the university.

Another potential exception that could be made is if you are highly experienced in a field or you are a native speaker of what is considered to be a critical need language. With these, there would be extra steps involved (such as the speaker of another language being asked to pursue a higher degree), but with the right university and/or skillset many things are possible. I'm pretty sure that the only qualification my business Chinese instructor had was that she was actually from China as she could not speak any English. Thus, as a Chinese major, I and another student ended up translating for her in class and tutoring everyone else after.

 

[Placeholder]

Often the working conditions for sessional lecturers are quite bad.

 

[RepresentingCaution]

Lecturers are often better teachers than professors. The professors stick around the university to do research and publish papers. They may or may not have good teaching skills. Lecturers, on the other hand, must have good reviews from students to keep their position . . . at least that's how it worked at my university.