Do Professors actually work in the lab or just write grant proposals?

[astor]

Do professors push most of their lab work onto graduate students and focus on grant proposals?

How does the answer differ for assistant professors, associate professors, and full professors?

 

[uby]

In my graduate department, professors doing benchwork was practically unheard of.

 

[eri]

The professor in my dept who ran a lab didn't spend much time working in it, but then, he had been there for more than 20 years. New professors spend a lot of time in the lab. And the fact is that most professors don't have a lab, and don't need one for their research - it's all computer based in some way (observational, computational, theoretical) and in my experience they tend to do a lot more of that themselves than have their undergrads or grad students do it.

 

[twofish-quant]

Do professors push most of their lab work onto graduate students and focus on grant proposals?

Most of the one's I know end up doing more or less that. They'd *like* to spend more time doing "real research" and less time doing paperwork. The trouble is that you can get a graduate student to do most of the grunt work, whereas writing the grant proposal to pay for the graduate student is something that only the professor knows how to do.

 

[Andy Resnick]

Do professors push most of their lab work onto graduate students and focus on grant proposals?

How does the answer differ for assistant professors, associate professors, and full professors?

Personally, I (assistant prof.) spend time working in the lab and writing up the papers/proposals. (and teaching, and mentoring, and grading, and ...). I spend more time in the lab during summer and winter break than other times, and I have more (undergrad and grad) students working in the lab during the school year than winter/summer break.