Wow, that's pretty terrible. I'm glad I've never seen anything like that! Most professors at my university seem remarkably nice, interested, generous with their time towards students, and overall like surprisingly great people, but I also know that they're nowhere near getting the recognition (=pay, mainly, but also just recognition of time spent) for all that extra work. Funnily enough, a significant portion of this course centered on the historical development of Western universities and how they have changed under neoliberalism and new public management, which can at least partly serve to explain both how the ones with too much of a concsience are overworked and underpaid, while others start gaming the system in order to be able to do the work they actually get paid to do - like the one you described. I mean, I've stepped in to teach classes where I'm given two hours of paid prep time for a two-hour lecture, which .... uh, that might be enough if you've taught the course for five years running and all you need to do is do a cursory search for new relevant literature and update the dates on your powerpoint, but when you're not familiar with the syllabus and haven't really touched that particular subject since you were a student yourself, it just means a day or so of unpaid work. That's no excuse for being a terrible teacher, of course. But it's as much of an expression of a deeply broken system as it is a personal failing.
In good news, today the rest of the group was much more active, and we had some really rewarding discussions. Guess they needed a warm-up after the month-long break since we last "met".
