No. Professors in the US generally spend lots of time managing their grad students and guiding their research, but not saying &quot;here is my idea, go make it work;&quot; they might help with writing papers and that is about it (also, I know many professors that still write their own code for their own ideas, and limit their advising student counts to do that).<p>In China, you&#x27;ll often have one professor for around 50 students with three tiers (undergrads, masters&#x2F;entry PhD&#x2F;high-level PhDs). So not only is the professor not programming, but neither is the upper-level PhD student! Everything is just eventually being done by undergrads who will ship off to the states&#x2F;west anyways.<p>On top of this many professors are often basically running sweatshops for their side businesses (since their university provided salary can be around 10K RMB&#x2F;month).