<p>Graduate students do not tend to teach more than professors, as the data, which is plainly available, clearly shows that only one, two or three classes per term are taught by graduate students. In case you forgot how to do average 1 out of 13 or 3 out of 13 is NOT a majority and nor does it mean that “on average” graduate students teach more than professors – in fact, it proves the opposite. </p>
<p>Please, just stop posting. You’re only making it plainly obvious to everyone you have literally no idea what you’re talking about.</p>
<p>OP–Take a look at Thomas Aquinas College in CA. All students do the same great books program in liberal arts–they have no majors, but it is essentially a philosophy major. They seem to have very good training in philosophy, theology, logic, and math. A lot of their students go on to graduate study in philosophy. This is a Catholic college, but you don’t have to be Catholic to go there. You will find the moral or theological component that you’re looking for.</p>
<p>It’s not clear to me if this is at all the sort of thing the OP is looking for – but just in case, further to atomom’s point, here are two other schools with similar Great Books curricula (but less religion): </p>
<p>If 3 out of 13 classes are being taught by professors, who is doing more teaching… Graduate students or professors? Clearly, professors as 10 classes is far greater than 3.</p>
<p>I think you meant 3 out of 13 taught by grad students. Though I actually count 4 NYU philosophy classes for the Fall 2012 semester taught by grad students. In any event, well short of a majority, but a substantial fraction, nearly 1 in 3.</p>
<p>Could it be that Mooreean is referring to the 22 recitation sections led by grad students? Most undergrad philosophy classes at NYU seem to include mandatory grad student-led recitation sections.</p>
<p>I’m referring to the 4 courses taught by graduate students, and the fact that graduate students do most of the teaching in courses on average. </p>
<p>I think NYU2013 is under the impression that each class involves an equal amount of teaching, and hence if there are more courses being taught by faculty, that indicates faculty is teaching more.</p>
<p>“I’m referring to the 4 courses taught by graduate students, and the fact that graduate students do most of the teaching in courses on average.”</p>
<p>If that is true,…“the fact that graduate students do most of the teaching in courses on average…,” then I just can’t imagine that this is a common occurance at most major research universties. One in three classes taught by grad students does seem quite high.</p>
<p>Graduate students do not do most of the teaching in classes. If a class is being taught by a professor, how is a graduate student doing more teaching? </p>
<p>How would teaching be unequal? A graduate student somehow teaches more material students? How would you even measure that? And since a professor is doing the teaching, how is a graduate student doing “more” of this teaching…?</p>
<p>Lastly, I still only count three courses being taught by graduate students - Great works, history and logic.</p>
<p>I think Mooreean, since he hasn’t actually been a part of the department should stop posting on something he’s not familiar with - as thus far, he’s mere proven he has no idea what he’s talking about. First he claimed that most courses were TAUGHT by graduate students and not professors (post #19 of this thread). From there, after I showed that, in fact, most courses are taught by professors, he then claimed that 8 graduate students taught courses, out of the 13 being offered, which seems like he just made up some numbers, as those were incorrect. Now he’s changed his claim to graduate students somehow do more teaching, even though the majority of classes is taught by professors…?</p>
<p>I see how you’re counting, NYU2013. There are 3 sections of Logic, each separately listed, 2 taught by grad students and one by a professor. I’m counting that as 2 classes led by grad students, you’re counting it as a single class. Whatever. It’s still a relatively high proportion of all the classes taught by grad students. </p>
<p>More surprising to me is that even many of the more advanced undergrad philosophy classes have recitation sections led by grad students. That makes for a lot of classroom time in grad student-led sessions. I’m sure that’s not unique to NYU, but just by way of contrast, Michigan is offering 30 undergrad philosophy classes this semester–counting the way NYU2013 is counting for NYU, i.e., all 4 sections of Intro to Philosophy counted as a single class. Of the 30, 28 are taught by tenured or tenure-track faculty, with no grad student-led recitation sections. Grad students teach all 4 sections of Intro to Philosophy, and a grad student is teaching History of Philosophy-Ancient. A separate Honors Intro to Philosophy is taught by a very distinguished senior faculty member, so if you come in through the Honors Program there’s a very good chance you’d never be in a classroom led by a grad student. That was my experience back in the day, and it looks like there’s even less grad student-led classroom time today because, except for the baby Intro class, virtually all philosophy classes are now small, professor-taught classes, with no need to break them up into recitation sections. Big difference in approach.</p>
<p>Philosophy classes are usually 30 students, which then get broken down into 10, sometimes 15, students for recitation sections, which are taken in addition to class hours. </p>
<p>For example, upper-level philosophy classes (jr. and sr. level) are taught by professors and have no recitation sections. These classes meet twice a week for 2.5 hours and are worth 4 credits. </p>
<p>Classes which have recitation sections meet the same amount of time under a professor (2.5 hours) and then have a Q&A for an hour and fifteen minutes which is recitation. Making the total time spent in classes 3h45m. Professors are doing most of the teaching, as most courses are taught by professors and the time spent in class is mostly with professors. Attendance in recitation is generally mandatory, but professors hold weekly office hours 1+ hours per week.</p>
<p>There are 3 courses out of 13 being taught by graduate students one term and 1 out of 15 during another. I certainly wouldn’t consider that very high and if you plan your schedule well, the only course one would have to take taught by a graduate student would be logic.</p>
<p>^ That’s so different from UCLA’s philosophy program haha.</p>
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<p>Classes for Phil. at UCLA, i’d say, probably averaged 60 students per class.</p>
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<p>This makes sense if your classes are only 30 students. The professors simply do all of the grading. But since ours are generally much longer, we still have TAs in our upper divs.</p>
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<p>Our classes meet twice a week for 2 hours, with a 1 hour section. So you guys get more depth, although we get more breadth.</p>
<p>That’s actually a very unusual number. Most places will have a majority of classes being taught by grad students in philosophy (c.f. Rutgers, Harvard, Pitt, etc.) This is even more so true in mathematics and some non-humanities. </p>
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<p>If you showed that most (but not all) courses were taught by professors, that entails that there exist courses which are not taught by professors, which makes the first claim true (perhaps you meant to say “he claims that most of the teaching is done by graduate students”). </p>
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<p>Actually those numbers were correct, just not for the spring of 2012. (They are true of the fall of 2011). </p>
<p>I am claiming, as I have from the beginning, that most teaching is done by graduate students. This is quite easy to deduce by seeing how many hours a week professors spend on teaching versus graduate students.</p>
<p>Actually i’m with bclintonk that that’s a high number. I am especially forgiving of NYU however. Although they might have a large number of classes taught by graduate students, the rest are taught by eminent professors in the field. You’d be lucky to have even one eminent professor at most other departments.</p>
<p>Additionally, the burden of proof lies with you. No one’s going to take your claims seriously unless you back them up with evidence and specifically cite which pieces of data support your claim. Until you do that, no one’s going to be convinced that 'most classes at Pitt and Harvard are taught by graduate students." </p>
<p>It’s also pretty ironic that you’re here debating with knowledgeable philosophy majors (philosophers? ) of which the burden of proof is very high, and then do a poor job supporting your arguments.</p>
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<p>Uh… no it doesn’t. Most, in this case, would be an exclusive or. The most basic interpretation of ‘most’ would be > 50%. Given that the number of graduate student teaching classes does not exceed 50%, they do not do most of the teaching. They do some of the teaching.</p>
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<p>If you’re counting sections (recitations,) that’s not really a fair comparison. In facts it’s incorrect. GSIs don’t come into sections with their own structured lesson plan (as professors do) but rather generally just try to elaborate on concepts. So counting those sections as ‘teaching’ would be very disingenuous.</p>
<p>RE: Courses taught by TAs–if this is important to OP, there are no TAs at Thomas Aquinas College (CA). They have professor-led round table discussion with 15-17 in each class. (I expect that St. John’s and Shimer are similar.)</p>
<p>I think this is precisely the confusion, people seem to be under the impression that being taught by an eminent professor is a <em>good</em> thing, this is rarely the case (there is a reason that graduate students are teaching the logic courses at NYU [which I can attest to given my having audited a course there], it’s because they are much better at teaching than most professors of logic. Of course, NYU is unique in that its grad students are <em>especially</em> good researchers AND teachers). </p>
<p>Eminent professors teaching classes are advantageous for other reasons, namely research opportunities, very good letters of recommendation, unique lecture material heard from the horse’s mouth etc. They do not get to be eminent professors by spending most of their time teaching, they are eminent for their research. Many of them have never had to teach more than a single course since grad school. </p>
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<p>Oh, the burden of proof doesn’t lie with me at all, since I’m just offering advice, not engaging in debate. If readers should find my advice counter-intuitive, they are free to check their intuition’s veridicality by going on google and seeing if the claims are correct for each school (or else simply asking someone who goes to school there whether or not they often see graduate students teaching). Otherwise they are free to reject those claims. </p>
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<p>Quite right. This is why I think NYU2013 had probably mistyped, since his first claim about my claims in that paragraph is: “He claimed that courses are TAUGHT by graduate students” (which one course being taught by a grad student is sufficient to prove). He has since edited his claim, so I imagine it was indeed a typing error. </p>
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<p>I’m strictly counting course material here, lecturing and the like. One logic class, for instance, involves probably 4 times as much teaching than one intro to philosophy, or intro to ethics class, if you measure teaching required by average time to complete assignments, or class average.</p>
<p>If you measure teaching in terms of absolute time, which is the only reasonable way to measure it, considering all other measurements would be far too subjective, professors still do most of the teaching.</p>
<p>Your claim is that somehow professors do less teaching, even though they spend more time teaching? </p>
<p>You haven’t even presented any grounds or basis for your claim that graduate students somehow teach more material than professors, even though professors spending more time teaching…</p>
<p>Your claim stopped making sense a few posts ago.</p>
<p>“Oh, the burden of proof doesn’t lie with me at all,”</p>
<p>You’re attempting to engage with people who studied philosophy, and then trying to tell them that they are incorrect…?</p>
<p>The burden of proof does, in fact, lie with you as you made the claim – now it’s up to you to be able to support the claim which you made. Otherwise, if no support for the claim can be found or support does not exist, you would be expected to redact the claim.</p>
<p>I don’t see how that’s the case. Unless of course by “absolute time” you mean the durations of each class summed together.</p>
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<p>Certainly not. My claim is that professors do less teaching, and hence spend less time teaching. </p>
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<p>Sure I have, namely in the form of the various semester listings which show that graduate students on average spend more time teaching than professors. </p>
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<p>Yes actually. You seem to be confused about how epistemic justification and the cooperative principle work. When I make some or other claim P, I’m not obligated then to provide an explanans for P, nor am I obligated to offer any evidence whatsoever for P (this is easily provable by considering the case where I am, and seeing that this would make any conversation last an infinite amount of time.). Further, I am fully epistemically justified in <em>believing</em> that P, without any evidence for that proposition at all being uttered by me (or being knowable by anyone else but me). If the person I’m having a discussion with wishes to <em>request</em> evidence for P, or assents to ~P or finds P otherwise counterintuitive and wishes to be convinced of P, that’s fine, but I don’t need to provide any such evidence. </p>
<p>In a <em>debate</em>, the two debating parties have a burden of proof, e.g. the proposition for debate, P, must be argued by the speaker for the proposition as true, whereas the speaker for the opposition must argue that ~P. Fortunately, I’m not in a debate, and have no interest in participating in one, and so I don’t have a burden of proof for P. I am merely offering advice to people wishing to choose an appropriate undergraduate program in philosophy (which is consistent with the advice of some of the most notable philosophers who work on graduate placement, e.g. Brian Leiter).</p>
<p>None of things you’ve presented show that graduate students teach more. Can you not read and interpret the sources you’ve apparently tried to cite?</p>
<p>3 out of 13 classes are being taught by graduate students. </p>
<p>The other 10 are being taught by professors.</p>
<p>How do professors do less teaching if the majority of classes are taught BY professors and not graduate students? How do professors do less teaching if, measured in hours spent teaching per week, professors spend MORE hours per week per class teaching than graduate students?</p>
<p>At this point you’ve demonstrated that you cannot read or that you lack critical reading ability, and you have literally no idea what you’re talking about. I’m actually utterly amazed by the complete incompetence you’ve demonstrated.</p>
) of which the burden of proof is very high, and then do a poor job supporting your arguments.</p>