Ah... this is a great question.

As an individual (not speaking on behalf of the company here), I do miss some things about being a professor:

• Those rare moments when my classes got really interested in something and we had a fascinating, invigorating discussion. The times when I learned from my students were best of all.
• I'm an extrovert, so I kind of miss just having a workplace with IRL interactions. There are also some specific colleagues I really miss.
• Maybe this sounds cheesy, but the optimism and energy of The Youth™. There is something infectious (nope, not COVID) about being around a lot of people who still have dreams and ambition and are just getting started ( that includes the many wonderful non-trad students who were in school at some other point in their lives) and generally think they have the world all figured out .
• The number of campus events with free food.

I really do not miss:

• The athletics apparatus. The shit with which I had to put up in the name of that institution, don't even get me started. At least now the athletes can make money.
• The surprising lack of autonomy I had as an instructor. Everything that went wrong was my fault (including the academic integrity reports I had to make, or the reports from a few scary incidents involving immature students); everything that went well was just the Department™ or the course design or the textbook.
• The egos. It might be my experiences, and this may be very different at other institutions, but academia seems to be a permanent state of big fish / small pond syndrome.
• The growth of the customer service mentality. At least at UP, we've stripped away the performance of an educational credential not being a transaction, so it sort of makes sense.
• Simultaneously not having the resources or background skills to bring disadvantaged (non-athlete) students up to the level needed to succeed in my classes AND having to grade on intangibles like "professionalism" that seemed to stack their disadvantage and ultimately result in just weeding out the first-generation or otherwise culturally disadvantaged students.
• The hassle:bucks ratio of the entire experience. Teaching was sub-minimum wage.

On my best days at UP, I interact with students in ways that resemble the ones I wanted to have when I made my terrible life choice to become a professor. My favorite UP clients are the ones who are trying to learn and use the service more like tutoring.

On my worst days, I just try to learn how to code.