<p>Both of my parents are professors at a large research university, so I feel that I should put my two cents in.
As far as I understand it, the large majority of professors at research universities are focused on research rather than teaching. The more funding a professor gets for their research, the less teaching they are required to do by the university. Most professors try to minimize the hours of teaching, because they aren’t professors because they want to teach, but because they want to do research. The professors who can’t get funding are required to teach more hours. So it would seem that most professors aren’t teaching a lot of classes because they love teaching, but rather that they are required to by the university to make up for the lack of funding that they are bringing in. Most professors who love teaching and don’t care about research very much go to teaching colleges. My parents are both biology professors, but I would hazard a guess that the same system would apply to engineering professors.</p>
<p>This is just what I’ve gathered from talking to my parents about how the system works.</p>