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A reader recently asked me the following question: Some of the language we use here (South Africa) is a little different. Could you clarify what you mean with 3:3 or 4:4?. If you are teaching 3-5 courses, is that full semester (half a year) courses? Or 'just' involved in some way with the course? Is it repeat classes? Or 3 - 5 completely different modules? Particular relevant is then what else is on your plate. Do you also supervise thesis work of other students, work on your own credentialing, research and publish, admin etc? My answer was as follows. You can also have an insight into my days here : Dear Kerry, thanks for asking! In Ecuador we have 3 semesters: Fall, Spring, Summer (short semester). I used to teach 3 courses in Fall (mid august - mid december) and 3 in the Spring (January - May). Each course is 3 hours of class a week (2 times 1,5 hours), and we don't have TAs (unless the course has more than 40 students - I never qualify for this). So I do all the teachin...

I recently ran a poll about teaching loads of professors in academia. While it is hard to compare the teaching loads of different contracts, I do get the impression that most professors teach two courses per semester - although none of the options in the poll received a majority. Again, this reflects the multitude of possible contracts and career paths in academia. Here's the Storify of the poll: [ View the story "How many courses do professors teach per year?" on Storify ]