Yesterday I addressed a major misconception about college professors:

College professors teach for a couple of hours and then go home.

Today I want to dispatch a second misconception:

College professors get summers off.

It is an urban myth. This one is right up there with “eating Mentos and drinking Coke will make your stomach explode.” It is just not true.

Faculty in the CSU–like most faculty across the country–work on ten month contracts. We work for ten months and we get paid for ten months’ work. For the other two months of the year we are “unemployed.” The payroll office conveniently holds back two months worth of salary over those ten months so that I get paid over the summer months, but that is money that I have already earned, not a “paid vacation.”

In reality during those two months when I am not on contract I am still working. I work most of the summer on the third part of my job–that I have precious little time to pursue during the year because of my teaching and service–research. This is time and effort for which I do not get paid.

This is true of almost all teachers. There is no such thing as a “paid vacation for teachers.”