Depends, but it is often four distinct classes. And yeah, it is a lot of work. This is why reusing preps is so valuable and why it is a bit ridiculous to see people demanding that professors suddenly figure out (on their own) how to rewrite their syllabi to mitigate cheating with AI.
My professor often taught classes with a couple sections, I’d help out sometimes—even that was a ton of work, pretty hard to do the main job (research) during those semesters. I wonder if (given the demographics of the board) folks are suggesting things from a similar place of informed ignorance to me—coming from research oriented STEM universities. In that case it could be reasonable to say “well, the situation with our classes has gotten so dire with AI, it might make sense to sacrifice a semester of research to sort that all out.” Of course if you are already prepping for four classes, there is not much slack to sacrifice…
In that case a lot of us would be specifically more wrong than a random person plucked off the street, somebody who thinks the main job of every professor is teaching.
