I’m working on a spreadsheet to compare my S21’s engineering options, and I’d like to include information about what % of courses are taught by graduate students as opposed to faculty.
Not sure if it’s available, however. Any suggestions? If not avail, thoughts on similar measures to capture quality of student/faculty interactions?
This is very college dependent. My kid got an engineering degree at Santa Clara University. All classes are taught by the professors, not any TAs or grad students.
You could reach out to engineering department heads and ask for that data. You could also pull courses from course offerings (both fall and spring) and look at who the prof/instructor is. Some schools will have profs teach large class sessions and TAs teach the related smaller subsections, while other schools do the opposite…the prof teaches the smaller subsections. Clearly schools that don’t have grad students won’t use TAs.
Good suggestions – and a lot of work, lol! 
I like the idea of digging into the semester course offerings and at least eyeballing it.
Tks!
Right, and you could just do that for the lower level intro type of courses (which would still be a lot, lol)
What does “taught by grad students” actually mean to you? If the lectures are given by the professor but the grad students are TAing the sections and marking your work (which is common for large intro courses), then does that count? And wouldn’t the college still say that course is taught by a professor if asked?
Good question. I consider a course taught by a graduate student if they are the ‘instructor of record’ for the course instead of a faculty member. I recognize most big schools will have grad TAs who help out w/ small group recitations, grading, etc. and I’m not so interested in trying to track that.
I’d like to know who’s doing most of the lecturing and leading the course – its design, exams, etc. (Recognizing, that many intro courses are designed at the department level for consistency, of course.)
It is likely that you will find that the “courses taught by graduate students” by your definition above (as opposed to graduate students being TAs for discussion and lab sections associated with a lecture taught by a faculty member) are most common in:
I.e. courses which are desired to be small (rather than use the lecture + TA format) but where far more small sections are needed than the department faculty can (or want to) teach, and the material is well within the ability of a graduate student in the subject to teach.
But also note that some colleges use large numbers of adjunct faculty for ordinary courses (as opposed to specialty topic courses where a non-academic perspective is helpful). Would you consider this “better” or “worse” than a graduate student as the lead instructor?
Also a good question. Yes, I’d also be interested in that data point as another indication of student/professor relationships. I think it’s a separate data point. Do you know whether/where that data is available?
But I’m more interested in the data about graduate students being instructor of record.
I’m just not sure how much that helps you to judge quality. In his larger lower level classes S’s relationship was only with the TA for his section (and in fact there was competition to get into the sections with the good TAs rather than the bad ones - particularly those whose English was poor).
I’m guessing that you have a theory that the % of TAs vs Profs is going to be a meaningful metric in assessing the relative merits of an engineering program. As somebody who has taught in an engineering school, and the parent of a grad student who has recently TA’d in an engineering program, I question that theory.
For a start, any university that offers a PhD in Engineering / Applied Physics / Math will have grad students teaching- they have to. Being able to teach your subject is one of the 3 pillars of earning a PhD, and pretty much every PhD program in the US has a requirement that every PhD candidate teach at least 1 semester (the requirements vary by university). As the teaching is a good source of revenue for PhD students, and as many PhD students hope to go into academia, many teach for many semesters more than they are required to. And yes, for the university grad students are cost-effective.
Which leads to the further point: what exactly is meant by “teach”? Typically there is a professor who “teaches” the course, and grad students lead smaller group discussions and labs. IME it is passing rare that a grad student is the primary “teacher”- as in, writing the syllabus, creating the assessments and structuring the class.
Then there is the question as to inherent quality: the theory that a class taught by a grad student is inherently ‘less’ than one taught by a prof is belied by the experience that many, many, many of us have had ourselves: the prof who is past their sell-by date, the prof who is the research star but isn’t good at introducing the subject to beginning students, etc. There are TAs who are much better at teaching introductory concepts than profs (I have seen students vote with their feet, choosing to go the TAs office hours over the Profs, b/c the TA was better at explaining the topic).
IMO, the relative impact of the “quality of faculty-student interactions” is also (perhaps surprisingly) somewhat dubious in engineering. Full disclosure: I believe that there is an engineering temperament- not in the lazy introvert/extrovert or nerdy detail person stereotypes, but one that is expressed by a particular kind of interest in understanding how things work. IME most profs and students share that temperament, and the ‘quality’ of that dynamic suits both sides pretty well.
Instead, I suggest two elements to consider:
The department: what can you learn about how the department is run? When you look at the Engineering dept newsletters, the student newspaper, online RateMyProf-type sites, are there complaints about scheduling? frequent changing of requirements? inability to get responses from the Dept Chair? (expect some complaint everywhere ofc!). When you talk to current students what sort of gripes stand out?
What is the peer networking like? Do students form study groups and help each other out, or do most students stick to themselves? Is there evidence of collaborative behaviour (the department websites are often good for this, but so are things like looking at the makerspace site, which may have pictures of some of the fun things that different student groups have done). Hand on heart, the thing that has made the most difference to their overall experience for the students that I have known is the peer group.
Sadly, neither of these suggestions lend themselves well to an Excel format. I understand the attractions of trying to quantify as many elements as possible, but the data has to reflect something meaningful.
I think you hit the nail on the head – if the primary instructor is a graduate student who, by definition, has limited teaching experience and may not communicate well, it seems like that’s a bad situation from A to Z for that course. On the other hand, If the TA he’s assigned for the small section discussion is bad, at least that doesn’t impact the course’s entire instructional experience b/c there’s also a more experienced faculty member who’s teaching. Does that make sense?
Although the TA may have limited formal primary instructor experience, they all have a high level of mastery of the subject matter. If the classes taught primarily by TA’s start going on the list that @ucbalumnus list then there may be reason for concern.
@collegemom3717 – This is super helpful. Thank you for taking the time to share your insights.
I like your two suggestions. They are more qualitative measures, but they do get to the crux of the matter.
Since you have background with this field, and to put my cards on the table, here are some of the options he’s considering (some of which he’s accepted to; other’s he waiting). I’d love any insights on the teaching/learning environment at any of these, if you happen be familiar:
WPI
NC State
Va Tech
Wisconsin
Rice
He also submitted apps to some big reaches to Columbia, Duke and UPenn.
He seems drawn to WPI but is somewhat concerned it doesn’t get ranked as highly as the others on his list and is less well known where we live. They have relatively few PhD students and I think he’d get really high quality faculty interaction and personalized attention compared to big public schools, but I don’t know how to weigh that against other factors.
He’s planning to do mechanical with a focus on robotics, fyi.
Not being able to visit many of these doesn’t help!
VaTech is a powerhouse, but my direct experience is out of date. My most recent experience with NC State was very positive for the student involved, who loved the hands-on aspects, had great mentoring and ended up with a great job in an area he hadn’t even heard of when he started. Between them, if you are in-state for one that’s the one I would go for!
Gradschoolkid looked hard at WI, rates it as a program, and notes that it is heavy on “real” engineering v the science end. She puts WPI and Rice as pretty even (for the engineering program- she didn’t factor in things like weather!).
When you say WPI is “less well known” where you live, do you mean name recognition to friends & family? I get that, but fwiw everybody in the field knows it!
Thanks for this! Yes, I think my S likes the ‘real’ engineering programs as he’s not sure he’ll want to do grad school – well, maybe a masters. But he sees himself as a working engineering who then moves to management or business side of the house.
Yes, WPI is less well known by family and friends, esp. where we live in NC. It also ranks lower on US News which shouldn’t really matter, but it does make him wonder. Based on my research, they are a bit of a unicorn in their approach which impacts that ranking, but they are highly respected.
When my S reads about WPI (hasn’t been able to visit), he really likes it – they seems to have great collaboration, global experiences, project-focused, and a nice social life. He’s also connected online with current students and likes what he’s learning. He doesn’t mind the weather - thinks real winters would be a nice change. I think he’s searching for ‘validation’ that it’s as well respected or good as as Va Tech or Wisconsin (he did tour them) from folks working (and hiring!) in the field.
Rice is still a big reach so not sure where to factor it in, but he really likes what he’s read about it too.
We are in-state for NC State so it truly makes a lot of sense. Alas, it’s close to home and he doesn’t like the campus vibe compared to Va Tech and Wisconsin. For 2x the cost, other choices are hard to justify, but we paid about that amount for his older sis, so we have to factor in ‘fairness’ too.
Wouldn’t that also apply if the primary instructor is a regular or adjunct faculty member who is not that good at teaching that course?
The faculty lecture + TA discussion model does mean that you have two chances to get a good instructor (i.e. if either the faculty member or TA is good), rather than just one.
Underlying the question here seems to be the assumption that faculty members are always better at teaching than graduate student TAs.
The bigger concern here would be secondary admission to major after enrolling (or, in Wisconsin’s case, a high college GPA needed to stay in the major):
I disagree with the premise of this question.
Faculty are primarily chosen for their ability to conduct and lead research. With a few exceptions, they are not chosen for their ability to teach undergraduates. Some faculty consider teaching a chore, and it comes through. I would not make any assumptions that professors = better teachers.
One of the best computer science teachers at Stanford does not have a computer science degree or a graduate degree. Does that mean Stanford is a bad engineering/computer science school?
None of my D’s engineering courses were taught by TAs but I can tell you that for some of her intro courses, she thought the TAs who did the recitations were better than the profs at explaining material. There have also been studies that show that students who have TAs in their courses are more likely to stick with engineering.
Unfortunately D didn’t have any overlap with the schools on your child’s list but I think you will find that at most schools the teacher of record is the professor, not the grad student.