College Grades

<p>Hi, I recently completed my first semester at college and I was a bit puzzled by the teaching/grading techniques. For all but one of my classes, it seemed the TAs acted as the professors: grading essays, tests, homework, and everything else. The professor only lectured. Granted, this makes sense for classes of over 100 people, but all of mine were 30 or fewer. Is this the norm for colleges now? My parents are concerned because they tell stories of their college life when the professors knew them by name and personally graded their papers. I guess I want to make sure that I am getting what I am paying (a lot) for: I pay tuition to learn from the professors and receive their own feedback, not those of a TA. Please let me know if this is universal or just unique to specific colleges. Thanks!</p>

<p>It’s pretty much the norm for large lectures to have multiples TA’s that do the grading and lead discussion sections, I believe. But I haven’t heard of TA’s doing all the grading in small classes. I didn’t even know classes with only 30 students HAD TA’s. The only comparable thing I can come up with is that in my honors seminar we had “Honors Teaching Fellows” who were typically juniors or senior who helped with grading and led a couple lectures. I don’t think your situations is normal at all, though.</p>

<p>TA= teacher’s aid?</p>

<p>I have never had a TA in any class.</p>

<p>I don’t believe the TA’s did any grading in my classes this past semester. I had two classes with a single TA each, a seminar class and a language class.</p>

<p>In my seminar class, the TA helped the students with assignments (freshman seminars are designed to improve writing ability in my school and we did first and final drafts) and acted as the webmaster of the blog where we posted a lot of assignments (lots of book review type assignments). But he was never in class and didn’t do any of the actual grading.</p>

<p>In my language class, the TA taught a review lesson every Thursday. But he didn’t do any grading either. He was just there to practice his own skills in the language and help us learn at the same time.</p>

<p>I haven’t had one of those massive lecture classes yet, so I don’t know the norm for that, but I would feel weird if the TAs did everything in my usual classes (almost always 35 people or less; I have one class of 50 people this semester).</p>

<p>

TA usually=Teaching Assistant</p>

<p>ahh never had one of them either… but i’ve only attended a foriegn university</p>

<p>The only time a TA grades in any of my classes, it’s grading that is either right or wrong. Ie in a math class where partial credit is not up for debate. All papers I’ve written have been graded by the prof.</p>

<p>We call them GSIs here (graduate student instructor), and they do tend to grade most of my papers. Not all of my classes have had them, this semester I had two classes without and one was a smallish class and the other was quite large. In my other classes, the profs graded some of my papers but the GSIs did some, and I think the GSIs graded my midterms.</p>

<p>I don’t really care. From my experience the feedback I get from the GSIs directly correlates with what the professors have said in lecture. It’s just a little bit annoying when a GSI grades harder than the actual prof does.</p>

<p>I’m considering transferring though because of this. It makes sense for a TA to grade math tests but mine grade short response and essays all of which are subjective - I would prefer the input of the professor. </p>

<p>I was also thinking of recommendation letters when I apply for jobs. In my current situation, if I were to need to get a reference and the employer tried to contact the professor, they would have no idea who I am since they only lecture. Maybe this is the case for most college students? Maybe I’m too used to the high school atmosphere where the teachers knew you and could write a solid recommendation?</p>

<p>That is a very stupid reason to transfer. And it will probably be the same or very similar at whatever other school you transfer to anyway. </p>

<p>As for recs, even if a prof graded all your stuff they probably wouldn’t be able to write anything concrete or know you unless you met with them in office hours after class and spoke up in class all the time all that. So you can still TALK to professors even if they don’t grade your things. One of my English teachers in a class of 100 told us this the first day of class - come to office hours and talk about your essays and get to know her because she missed the student-teacher interaction when she taught huge classes. TAs are needed and they aren’t going to go away. How would you like to be stuck grading a huge stack essays over the weekend alone when you’re teaching two or three classes and working on your own research and probably balancing a family as well? </p>

<p>If you want the professor’s opinion so badly then go ask them in office hours. It’s that easy. Transferring over this is completely ridiculous.</p>

<p>You have not named your school. The more research-oriented your university is, the less time professors are expected to spend on instruction. Grading is one of the first tasks that is outsourced to graduate students, especially in lower-level classes. The specifics vary between colleges and departments. My own experience:</p>

<p>Small college #1:
Introductory math, science and language classes have student graders. Professors grade everything else, have plenty of office hours and hold recitations themselves.</p>

<p>Small college #2:
Some departments (but not all) have a student grader for every undergraduate class. Recitations are held by students as well. Professors are only expected to grade exams or term papers themselves, but schedule several office hours each week to meet with students.</p>

<p>Research university #1:
Grading similar to small college #2, but less interaction between professors and students outside of class. Few professors have more than 1 hour set aside to meet with struggling students. Students are generally expected to get help elsewhere (e.g. classmates, the TA or a tutor).</p>

<p>Research university #2:
Professors are not expected to do any grading at all (on the undergraduate level, at least), nor do they meet with students outside of class. You might see them in lecture and then never again.</p>

<p>In my experience at a small-ish LAC, all of my math and science classes have had a grader for problem sets and small assignments, and one or two TA’s who hold help sessions. Professors have graded all exams and major assignments (such as term projects). In my humanities and social science classes there has been at most a tutor, but the professor has done all grading. For all classes professors hold office hours every week.</p>

<p>IMO, TA’s grading essays and assignments can be a problem. Most often these are first or second semester grad students that have little experience grading papers. </p>

<p>The main problem with grad students is they have high standards for their papers/assignments. Because they haven’t been exposed to a wide range of writing styles (lack of experience reading/grading papers), they will often give lower grades to papers that don’t fit their own style. </p>

<p>Seasoned professors have the advantage of having read thousands of different papers over the years (typically on the same or similar topics) and can better separate the A papers from the B and so forth. A TA doesn’t usually have this skill set yet.</p>

<p>When I attended a top 50 private university many of my papers were graded by TA’s, usually receiving a poor grade at first. I often had to resubmit the paper directly to the professor for a regrading. </p>

<p>It can be a major problem because your GPA can get killed while these TA’s learn the ropes, and you are spending a tremendous amount of money to have a 23 year old aspiring professor kill your grades.</p>