Somewhat off topic, but I doubt very much there are any professors at state schools specializing in research that spend anywhere near 55 hours a week on their classes. Maybe he meant per month.
In my experience, this works out pretty well since many of the full-time lecturers do dedicate a lot of their time to teaching (55 hours is totally believable depending on teaching load) and do a really good job of it.
I never really realized how much work a good lecturer does until I was a TA under them. I have so much more respect for people teaching introductory classes now.