<p>orangeblossom:</p>
<p>Many of the duties delegated to TAs involve grading exams and commenting on papers rather than preparing lectures. So, profs at LACs and research universities who teach the same number of courses will have different teaching loads. They will probably spend the same amount of time preparing lectures, but the LAC profs will be on their own doing the grading of papers and exams. Another difference is that the LAC profs will be leading the sections themselves rather than delegating that task to the TAs. </p>
<p>It is not correct that LAC profs are entirely focused on their teaching while research university profs focus more on their research. To take an example, David Blight produced his major research, culminating in his book on the Civil War, Race and Reunion, while teaching at Amherst. That work led him to be courted by research universities. He is currently teaching at Yale. One will find that profs at top LACs have pretty impressive records of publishing. Things may be different in the sciences where expensive labs are needed to do cutting edge research.</p>