Why do academics work only nine months of the year? I'm wondering how best to respond to queries from non-academics along the lines of "Why should you be paid during the summer holidays?" This is the sort of question I hear a lot in this economic climate here in Ireland, though I strongly suspect that one encounters similar questions and opinions elsewhere.

There is a subtext that public money is scarce, that people in "real" jobs work themselves to the bone and pay high taxes, while some people get to spend a significant proportion of the year on a sun lounger at the tax payer's expense. I like to think that we academics do earn our crust, but as somebody paid public money I think it's a reasonable question, and one I would like to answer better.

There are a couple of obvious responses.


It's nothing like nine months, especially when you factor in exam marking and processing, dealing with appeals, Autumn repeat exams, lecture preparation for the following year etc.
Did I forget to mention research? That's a full-time job in itself! And there are secondary activities such as applying for grants, judging grant applications, and supervising (post-)graduate students.


However these points don't apply to all academics. For example, I work in an Institute of Technology, possibly akin to a liberal arts college in the US, where there are typically 18 teaching hours per week in term time, but research is a bonus activity, and we have 10 weeks' summer holidays. So the core point seems to be that it's near-universal practice to have a teaching break during the summer months (exactly when this break is, and its length vary of course). But why is this? Are there good reasons that might satisfy somebody who is not already steeped in the academic life?

It's tempting to say that teaching is particularly intense, and this period of estivation is needed to avoid burnout. But is this true of teachers and academics more than, say, junior hospital doctors or care workers?

Presumably this question is tied to the question of why school teachers have summer holidays: I realise that this latter question may be off-topic for this site, but to the extent that answers to it have a bearing on my question, I would like to hear them.

Finally I am aware that not all academics are paid during the summer months. Many have temporary contracts that don't span the summer vacation. I hope that this situation remains the (in my opinion, disgraceful) exception rather than the rule.

EDIT: Thanks to Oswald Veblen and Dave Clarke for pointing out the general practice in US academia of being paid for only 9/12 of the year. In Ireland, and I think in much of Europe, academics are usually paid for 12 months. So some of the motivation for this question ("Why are we paying you academics during the summer?") may not apply in the US, although the basic question still stands ("Why don't academics typically have to teach during the summer?" or, in the more provocative (and inaccurate) terms that this is sometimes put: "Why don't academics work during the summer?")
The following applies to a previous version of the question: "Why do academics get paid to work only nine months of the year?".  The question of whether academics do work work in the summer, compared to whether they are paid to work over the summer, is more difficult.  Most faculty in the U.S. have 9-month contracts, but in my experience most faculty nevertheless work on their research and teaching during the summer. 



In the United States, it is very common - nearly universal, in fact - for a standard academic contract to span 9 or 10 months. There are several reasons for this:


It allows the university to pay less. The standard rule of thumb is that a 9 month contract pays 9/12 of what the corresponding annual contract would pay. Many (most?) faculty have their 9 months of pay split up into 12 months of paychecks -- but this is an accounting fiction, not a sign that they are paid for 12 months of work. If few students are around over the summer, there is less reason for universities to pay salary to their faculty for that time - having a break in the contract balances the university income and expenses.
It allows faculty to be paid more. This is the flip side of paying 9/12 of an annual salary: the faculty member can, in principle, take another job during the summer.


Many grants, for example, are able to pay "summer salary", which is really just extra income. But these grants do not allow the faculty member to take salary from the university at the same time they take salary from the grant. The "9 month contract" resolves this: the faculty member can state they are actually only paid for 9 months of university work, so the grant can pay 2 or 3 months of extra salary during the summer.
Similarly, some universities pay extra to faculty who teach during the summer - that would not be possible if the summer was treated as part of the basic contract.
A smaller number of faculty use the summer for consulting work, or other jobs genuinely different from their university position.

Faculty like to travel over the summer. During the academic year, it is hard to leave for personal reasons, because of class. By claiming that the summer is "off contract", academics can travel however they like during that period of time, without having to justify their time.  So having the contract pause during the summer makes the job more attractive to job candidates, allowing the university to attract some people who might otherwise take higher-paying jobs elsewhere.


The reason I just cited are all purely economic - they can be justified solely in terms of saving money for the school, increasing pay for the faculty member, or attracting better candidates. There is also "tradition" as a reason for the summer break, as is also the case at lower levels of education. 

However, the "9 month contract" is fictitious in a few ways:


Most faculty still have access to their office, library, email, and other university resources even when they are technically not "on contract" over the summer. 
Research faculty usually continue to work on research during the summer, and travel to conferences (which may even be reimbursed by the university, even though the faculty member is technically not on contract!). This often happens even when the faculty don't have grants or other summer funding. 
Many faculty use some of their summer time to prepare for their classes, even though they are not being paid to teach over the summer.
There are other activities during the summer: committee meetings, advising, etc. Some faculty participate in these, for various reasons, even when they are off contract.