<p>I go to UCSB and all the lectures are done by professors while the discussion sections are done by TAs.</p>
<p>
Think again.</p>
<p>Pulling up a random department (anthro), I count at least four courses taught solely by graduate students (cultural anthropology, anthropological data analysis, human growth, and human universals).</p>
<p>Really, it’s astonishing how much people try to sweep it under the rug. When 20% of the classes in a department are being taught by graduate students, that is not an inconsiderable thing.</p>
<p>As a PhD student, at a tippy top private business school- they at the time- I taught my own MBA classes. All of us grad students did. We almost always had higher teaching evaluations than tenure track profs. And most of us made faculty honor roll. Where else would we learn to teach?</p>
<p>Its true at research university that has graduate students. This worry is grossly overrated. I’d MUCH rather my kids have a grad student who is fresh with the material, remembers how they learned, takes their teaching very seriously and over prepares (this is the norm for grad students), than a lazy over the hill full prof who no longer cares or has to care, usually redoing the same old thing every year with the minimal of effort.</p>
<p>No grad student teaching classes, but plenty of postdocs. For what it’s worth, I don’t think that I’m special enough to be taught by nobel prize winners. Some people might complain that a postdoc who “only got his PhD this year” is teaching a sophomore-level course, but I’m fine with it. I wouldn’t even mind if a grad student taught that kind of course. It’s too hard for me to object to the concept of grad student teaching when I didn’t forfeit a single one of my AP credits.</p>
<p>I’m an integrative biology student at Berkeley and I can guarantee you that none of the classes have TA’s teaching primarily unless it is a reading and composition course. Berkeley has a lecture where the professor teaches most of the material while maybe once a week you’ll go to a discussion, which is like a class where the TA reviews the lecture material. You can go checkout some Berkeley lectures through their webcast sources.</p>