Quote:
Originally posted by J. Arthur God:
Quote:
Originally posted by Count Iblis II:
Professors don't really need to teach undergraduates. The reason they do it is because the teaching duties are fairly distributed over the faculty members. If you want to teach less they may give you some other things to do, like organizing the seminars, or maintaining the fauculty webpage.
This is definitely not the case for physics departments in the UC (University of California) system. My advisor was able to avoid teaching occasionally by paying his salary out of his endowed chair. He was unable to do this 100% of the time since the department needed him to teach.

You also make the assumption that all teaching is done at institutions with graduate students and significant research programs. This is not the case. Undergraduate only or schools with masters degrees as the top degree are quite common (at least in the US). Many of them are excellent.
Yes, in the US the situation is a bit different. Here the Profs and other staff usually meet and decide how to share the teaching duties.