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I kid you not, the first thing I did when I read the question was chuckle at the bit about free time :-)OK, deep breath. (as usual, answering from perspective of CS faculty in the USA)Yes, being a professor at a top university is stressful. I saw it in my faculty advisors at Yale and Berkeley, and I felt it first hand as faculty at UC Santa Barbara (assistant, associate then full professor), and now at Univ. of Chicago (chaired full professor). But then again, so is any other highly competitive job. Certainly, if you make it this far along, then you’ve been trained through experience on how to handle the stress well. So it is stressful, but we all have our own ways of handling it. Some approaches are not very healthy, and can lead to early burnout or disruptions in the non-academia parts of your life.Just saying work is stressful is not very helpful. Instead I will say that in general, faculty at top schools have far more work than there is time to do. There is no efficient schedule that we can come up with to actually get everything done. It’s generally impossible. Instead, our scheduling algorithms are more like prioritization algorithms, with the full knowledge that low priority items are likely to be ignored and forgotten. The more senior we get, the more work tends to come our way, and the more things fall off our plate and on to the floor. The number of “Hi, did you get my email about XYZ, because you never responded” emails I’ve gotten has dramatically increased over the years. A common piece of advice between faculty (that is rarely heeded) is that we all (and especially younger faculty) need to learn to say NO more often.Along those lines, we generally don’t actually have free time. We protect our family time fiercely. Outside of that, we just have time when we’re switching between tasks. And there are times when we should be working, and our brain just refuses to cooperate. To keep a good life balance, faculty tend to have to work hard to constrain the hours when we work, so work does not consume our lives. In addition to spending time with family and friends, faculty colleagues I know well generally have one or two hobbies they are passionate about and try hard to maintain. For some it’s long distance running, for others it’s cycling, travel or creating music, and others dance or art. For me personally, it’s a fairly even split between fantasy football, going to the gym, and travel (and of course Quora).Just to drive home the point about endless workload, here’s a list of work-related tasks that have come up regularly to consume my time this past year:Teaching activities: lecturing, prepping for lecture, writing/updating homeworks/class projects, grading exams/project papers/presentations, meeting with TAs, handling student requests/emails.Mentoring my (mostly PhD) students: 1-on-1 meetings, project meetings, signing forms, buying/reimbursing equipment they need, writing letters of references for jobs/internships/fellowships, giving feedback on paper drafts, conference talks, job talks, posters.Driving research: reading papers in related areas, brainstorming and planning projects, meeting new colleagues in CS and other departments to exchange research ideas, teleconferences w/ collaborators, dealing with IRB and legal requirements related to projects, buying/reimbursing/monitoring equipment/resources, writing presentations, writing funding proposals to NSF/DARPA/industry programs, writing annual reports for funded projects, managing funding and expenditures, attend research conferences.Work for the department: typically 3–4 committees with lots of meetings. For this past year, I was heavily involved in faculty hiring (reading/evaluating faculty apps, discussion/inviting candidates, hosting candidates on-site interviews, leading candidate discussions, recruiting candidates after offers), graduate affairs (evaluating grad students, changing PhD curriculum, dealing with any issues that pop up), graduate admissions (travel to recruit students, reading/evaluating PhD & MS apps, interviewing students, discussion, decisions on admits, recruiting admitted students, hosting visits), undergrad curriculum (changes to undergrad curriculum)Work for the campus: lots of ad hoc things that pop up. Participate in invited panels, give talks to visitors from government agencies/industry visitors/alumni, meetings for various campus-wide or inter-departmental initiatives, interact with the media and press as a limited representative of the department (and occasionally campus).Service for wider research community: serve on program committees for conferences (lots of this, reading and reviewing paper submissions), serve as chair on conferences, travel to serve on evaluation panels for funding agencies (US and other countries), write tenure letters for younger colleagues, write promotion to full letters for younger colleagues, write job letters for students/former colleagues, write letters for PhD applications by undergrads, serve on editorial board for journals, travel to serve on panels for conferences, travel to give keynotes for conferences/workshops.Various types of outreach: visit and give talks at companies, visit/give invited talks/meet faculty at other universities, serve as judge on hackathons, advise K-12 STEM/CS organizations, host undergraduate summer interns, host high school summer interns.I probably missed some details here or there, but I think I got the bulk of it. I probably do a bit more service than some, and there is generally less service type work for more junior faculty. Hopefully this gives you a sense of what faculty at good schools have to work with.

Thanks Ravi Kiran JP for the questionHow is the Kerala government ensuring education to students without the Internet?As per all latest statistics, Kerala rank 2nd in India among the states that have maximum Internet penetration. Internet Penetration is 54% in Kerala which is much higher than any other state barring New Delhi which has 69%. But New Delhi is a City State, while Kerala is a larger state, so this 56% is spread across much larger areaAs of now the following are the stats of KeralaThe second most internet penetrated state in India,For every 100 people in Kerala, 70 people are connected with InternetFor every 100 Urban people in Kerala, there are 164 internet subscribersFor every 100 Rural people in Kerala, there are 38 internet subscribersSo from the above figures, one can understand there is a huge gap between Urban-Rural divide. But the catch is that, Kerala is the second most urbanized state in India, with 47.7% of its people living in towns/cities and majority of the villages are unofficially recorded as outgrowns (ie, in records as village, but in reality as town). This explains the unusual difference. In urban areas, Kerala ranks second when comes to internet subscriptions for all telecom circles across the state at national level. This is second only to Delhi.This means the internet penetration is really high.Other interesting statistics is that, Kerala ranks first in Smartphone penetration with 62% of people who owns a Mobile Phone, owns a Smart PhoneSo despite of high statistics figures, there is a digital divide46% of Malayalees donot have access to Internet and 38% have no smartphone. There is another aspect that there is class and gender divide over this too.For example, while 62% have smartphones meaning that, in a family of 4, the husband might have a smart phone, while wife and kids may have feature phone. If Husband donot lend their smart phone to the kids to learn, so then no use of higher stats figures.So this is something we all understood during the survey taken by General Education Department in May 2020.So Kerala Govt decided NOT TO HAVE an internet based learning program as the internet divide is higher.But there is something that is available-TelevisionKerala has another record. It is the state that has highest television penetration and cable penetration in the country. The state has 93% television penetration and almost 90% cable TV penetration. Most of the homes do have a television and hence Govt of Kerala imparts E-Learning thro’ television as primary sourceKerala Govt has an education channel called VICTERS TV and its the first full fledged educational channel in India operated by a Govt. This is also a Free-to-Air satellite channel thro’ Edusat.Screenshot of Victers TV channel- India’s first 24 hours Educational Channel operated by a Govt agency (General Education Department of Kerala State)This channel will conduct classes for all subjects from Grade 1st to 12th standard (barring 11th standard as admission process hasn’t been completed as of now)Branded First Bell, the channel’s educational offering is available live from 8.30 am to 5.30 pm with 2 hours earmarked daily for class 12, 1.5 hours for Class 10, one hour for classes 8 and 9, with three periods of 30 mins, each while the lower classes have only one period of 30 mins each. Re-telecasts are available in the evening and night and during weekends.This channel is available in Cable TV services in Kerala and many outside Kerala. The channel is also listed in almost all DTH services in India.So it works in multi-model levelTelevision viewersEach lesson for each subject is taken by specialized teachers for each class using lot of graphics and innovative presentation methods to maximize attention. All episodes are pre-recorded and mixed with lot of graphics and multi-media options to enhance quality of understanding the concept.After streaming on air, it shall be made available as re-telecasts in same day in evenings and on weekends for those who missed any episodesA Plus two student attending her English class thro’ Victers TV channelInternet viewersEvery episode is live-streamed thro’ Victers Channel website live as and when its on air in TV.All Episodes are available in Victers Website to check laterAll episodes are uploaded in Youtube channel of Victers after streaming in Television, so that it can be played as and when a student likes8th standard students learning from Victers Live Streaming thro’ its websiteSmart PhoneThere is an Victers App for both Android Playstore and Apple Store to downloadThe app live-streams the episodes as and when its on air and all past episodes can be viewed from the library.Students will get a whatsapp short video from their school-class groups, every day.Kids learning from Victers Mobile Application which streams lessons livePost streaming discussionAs television based streaming is one-way communication, the option of clearing doubts cannot be possible. For this reason students can post their doubts to their school’s teachers via Phone calls after each day’s streaming or have a whatsapp group discussion. Each class will have their groups and teachers as admins to such groups.Teachers provide notes and worksheets to students to practice at home and doubts further to be cleared in same manner.There is a big problem unaddressed in the beginning as it was a trial exercise, to identify the gaps and issuesApprox 2 Lakh students has no access of either internet or mobile or television. They are mostly from the most vulnerable/depressed communities like Dalits, people below poverty line living in remote areas, fisherfolk etc.This became a major social issue after a girl from a poor family committed suicide due to lack of access to her class due to non-availablity of internet-television etc.Kerala Class X girl ends life allegedly over lack of access to online classesTo resolve this, Govt and public has formed various action plansGovt has formed Community study centers and neighbourhood study groups where students without televisions/internet etc can visit and access television to study. As the numbers of such students in each locality will be less, the govt donot expect crowding or larger attendance.A community study center opened in Wayanad where under privileged students can access public TV and attend online classSmall reading rooms and community halls are converted into temporary study centers for underprivileged students to access public TVs with social distancing.Govt has asked Local governments to form a ward level study committees with some resource people within them, who can visit and help students at home. Teachers within each ward will be part of this resources committee. These committees will identify houses and teachers/resources people visit houses and provide notes & worksheets on regular basis and clear doubts based after evaluating worksheets/home-works. Even police officers are part of this team as resource persons as many in Police force are highly qualified to help students.Kudumbashree (Asia’s largest women SHG community) has tied up with Kerala’s largest State run NBFC- KSFE to have Laptop chits fund so as poor people can buy Laptops and repay in smaller amounts a part of microfinancing schemesLaptop for students: Kudumbashree, KSFE to start micro chitty schemeVarious student groups and parties have formed their own study groups and study centers to ensure these students able to learn thro’ them. Many student political groups are collecting money thro’ crowdfunding and purchasing televisions which they are handing over to District Education Offices to be distributed to poor students. In last one week, approx 1800 new television sets have reached various district offices to be distributed to students.Various groups and organizations arranging and distributing television sets to underprivileged to have inclusive learningTeachers’ association to donate 2,500 TV setsManju Warrier, Aashiq Abu and B Unnikrishnan donate televisions to support students for attending online classes - Times of IndiaPhonebank and Laptop pooling has been started where groups seek public to lend their extra smartphones, Laptops, Tablets etc to a common collective bank which shall be distributed to poor students for a few months as loan. The collective takes responsibility for each gadget thro’ common insurance etc and provide internet connectivity to these gadgets thro’ tieing up with telecom companies.Public sponsorships are sought thro’ various charity organizations and often celebrities are now working thro’ their fanclubs etc to procure funds to purchase new television sets or Tablets etc to those who don’t have any option. Kerala Govt has officially requested all companies operating in Kerala for lending a portion of their CSR funds for this purpose.Kerala Govt’s own Laptop manufacturing company- Coconics (PPP venture between Kerala Govt with UST Global and Intel) has started manufacturing cost effective laptops with heavy state subsidies to have new student laptops for Rs 11k and 13KKerala Govt's Education Plan For Students With No TV, Internet Or SmartphoneSaying so, Kerala Govt firmly believes, Online education is not a permanent replacement to classroom education which has been underlined by CM and many other ministers.The govt officially mentioned this is just going to be temporary due to Covid as Schools have bigger purpose in a child’s life as an institution to impart values, morals, character formation which happens thro’ interactions with teachers, friends and classmates, which no television or internet can provide so.

It is absolutely not an easy job. I was a professor at two large public universities one of which is a Carnegie Level 1 Research Institution (the highest level) and is annually ranked among the top 5 public universities and among the top 20 public and private universities in the USA and my wife taught at a large community college, so I have seen a broad spectrum of college teaching situations. In my experience as a professor for 25 years at research universities, I found that it is an extremely demanding and stressful job (even after tenure). I usually taught 2 classes a semester, supervised a research group of graduate students and a post-doc, wrote research papers for publication, gave presentations at professional conferences, wrote proposals for research funding, organized the logistics for and was chief scientist and expedition leader during Research expeditions to the seas around Antarctica, the western Pacific, Gulf of Mexico, Appalachian Mountains and Rocky Mountains, taught field courses in remote locations, was responsible for managing the financial accounts and making sure that multiple people were paid their salaries.I summarize it as saying that professors have the following jobs (with 2 to 3 of them consuming the equivalent of a half-time job or more at the same time), rather than the professor having just one job:During any semester I did most of the jobs listed below:Teacher,Scientist- Formulate new research questions and convert these into testable hypotheses, design experiments to generate data to test hypotheses, write proposals to obtain funding to actually conduct the experiments, conduct the experiments and collect data in the field and/or lab, analyze the data, report results of experiments orally at conferences and in written form via reports to funding agencies and professional papers published in peer-reviewed journals, repeatProfessional Writer,Editor- Serve as reviewer of manuscripts for various professional societies as well as review research proposals for various government and public funding agencies,Professional Public SpeakerLogistics Expert -Procure equipment and supplies for field and lab research, organize freight transfer by ship, truck, train, ship and air of research equipment and personnel to field research sites, handle complicated customs paperwork associated with shipping equipment,Manager and Mentor of people,Entrepreneur and Salesman- Procure research funding for field, lab and equipment expenses by writing proposals to grant agencies and corporations and recruiting new students,Admssions Officer - Annually review graduate applicationsAdministrator- Serve on a wide range of Department and University Committees.In addition to being woefully underpaid for the level of effort, time and expertise that is required to perform all of these tasks successfully, my colleagues and I also endured the insult of having our Masters graduates immediately take jobs that paid them 2 to 3 times as much per year in salary as we were paid for our decades worth of experience and knowledge. We are quite happy that are students are compensated well for their work and knowledge, but it is distressing that the public does not value the work that we do for the state. Our children do not even get a discount to attend the states public higher education institutions, so you would think that we would be compensated so that we could afford to send our children to college without having to take out loans. I enjoyed the job, but grew resentful of these inequities as anti-intellectualism grew in recent years and I experienced a decline in respect for authority and professors.I understand that the public is unhappy about the growing cost of tuition and education, but faculty are not the cause of this. Increasing cost cost are driven by universities feeling that they need to provide all types of unnecessary amenities and luxuries on campus in order to compete with peers for students. Fancy gyms, gourmet-style dining options and new student union building etc. are not critical to university function, but they are being implemented and are very expensive. During this same time period, the public has grown more selfish and is only willing to pay for items that they feel will benefit them directly and personally. Altruistic ideas like paying higher taxes so that our society benefits from having well-educated populace is unpopular. Consequently, there has been a steady decline in the amount of funding provided by state legislatures to fund higher education.At the same time, funds from another important revenue source for universities have also declined. The public and most students do not know that a huge proportion of the budget of many universities comes from the overhead that is paid to universities to support research grants. Unfortunately, there has been steady erosion in the size of the budgets of the various federal research funding agencies that are the sources of this research overhead. The reduction occurred as the cost of living increased and budgets did not keep pace and in some instances because of outright budget reductions. As a simple example of how this money gets to universities, a faculty member writes a proposal to a funding agency and earns a grant that requires $100,000 to complete the research, the faculty member must add between an additional 40 and 70% of that %100,000 to the budget of that grant proposal to cover the cost of access to buildings, lights etc. that are indirect costs to the university for hosting the research effort. The percentage that is added to the budget in indirect costs is negotiated between each institution and funding agency. The reality is that the once the indirect costs for the grant are received by the university, that money can be used to pay for any expense in its budget and it is. So what really happens is the 40–70% received in indirect costs is used to operate the university and becomes part of its annual budget. These indirect costs can account for as much as 60%+ of the university’s annual budget, with the contribution from the legislature being as low as 5% in some states, tuition accounting for 20–25% and gifts covering the remaining 10–15% of university operating cost. To put these numbers in perspective, during the first 12 years of my career as a professor, I was very successful in obtaining grant funding, and the amount of money that the university received in indirect costs off of my grants was quite a bit larger than my annual salary. Those grants also paid salaries to 4 to 6 graduate students each year (along with their tuition expenses), a post-doc’s annual salary and part-time income to several undergraduate students. During that that period I taught the same number of courses as all of the other faculty. In effect, during that period, I taught a full course load for free for the state, because my salary was compensated for by the research overhead that my grants brought into the university.Perhaps now some of you can understand why Research is so important at universities. Like everything else in the world, it’s all about money. Ironically, it was during this same period that legislators began cutting the state contributions to university budgets. Since funding was also declining at the research funding agencies, universities only had tuition increases and increased requests for gifts to use as a means to cover the budget short-fall created by reductions in the state contribution to university budgets. The increases in tuition angered the public and lead them to demand for more from universities. People began to focus on how many courses we teach and to criticize faculty for not working very hard (because the public does not understand how universities work). In response to the public outcry , the legislature put pressure on universities to focus more on teaching. Of course that pressure trickled down to faculty who are already stretched far too thin. Ultimately I feel that it all lead to reduced respect for faculty by the public and students.Is being a professor easy? Hell no, and not only is it not easy, faculty often are poorly compensated for it and do not receive the respect that their hard work should earn for them in the USA.