Courses taught by graduate students?

Applying to College
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Hi all:

Anyone know of a list that ranks college/universities on the % of undergrad courses taught by grad TAs? I found something from US News from several years ago, but can’t seem to find more recent data on this. We’ve applied to several excellent large national universities in big cities (as that is her preference), but I’m interested in this question. Big R1s don’t seem to make this information readily available, however.

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How do you define “taught by grad TAs”?

Do you mean:

  1. Courses where the primary instructor is a graduate student TA?
  2. Courses where the primary instructor is a faculty member, but discussion/recitation and/or lab sections are with graduate student TAs?
  3. A fraction of courses where the primary instructor is a faculty member, but discussion/recitation and/or lab sections are with graduate student TAs, based on the fraction of class hours with the TA in the course?

Case 1 is likely only common in courses like beginning foreign language, frosh-level English composition, and sometimes lower level math. Case 2/3 are quite common at research universities, particularly in lower level courses.

But also, if you are concerned about “transient” instructors, you may also want to know how adjunct faculty are used. Use of adjunct faculty in specialty electives where a non-academic perspective is desirable may be seen differently from the use of adjunct faculty in core courses for one’s major.

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I’d expect this to get bogged down in definitions. Does grading count? Lab classes? What if the Lab is a separate course number? Recitation sections?

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Agree with all of the above.

People get anxious about TAs but not Adjuncts. The % faculty who are hired on an irregular basis (typically by the semester) has increased from ~25% in the 1970s to ~40% in 2011 to ~75% now. They may be perfectly good teachers! but they have no job security, and typically have to cobble together enough jobs to pay the rent, often at more than one institution. Even very highly rated teachers can be there one term, gone the next and back the following term.

And, people tend to assume that TAs are more of a problem at big unis than fancy tippy tops- but it was Harvard students who protested at the standard of English of their TAs!

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4 posts in and the thread went off the rails with anecdotes of the use of adjuncts.

The OP can PM me with the clarification answers to questions asked on definitions. If and when that happens, I’ll reopen.

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