<p>[Top schools are putting increasing weight on teaching ability.]</p>
<p>Top schools presumably have the top students who should be able to learn well, even with professors that aren’t the best at teaching. And they can bring their research into the classroom or maybe even individual students to their research. Was this the old calculus for top schools?</p>
<p>The teaching load for typical full-time profs at major universities is two classes per term and some credit earning supervision of grad students. That’s it. Big star research profs might only have to do one or no classes each term. Is that right? Seems light to me but if any school demands say three classes per term the prof will be out the door to some place with a lighter load. They have a good “union”. Blame Harvard and Yale I guess–they set the standards. And have lots of adjuncts and non-tenure track profs doing the scut work of teaching undergrads.</p>
<p>The 270 hours teaching load was based on two courses per term, coming to about $150 an hour of lecture (not counting grading or preparing). </p>
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<p>Maybe so, but the top schools also provide more resources for students. Recitation sections are smaller than at state unis, for instance; there may be more training of TAs than at state schools, more support for struggling students, and so on and so forth.</p>
<p>I believe that student evaluations are taken more seriously than before. My S has been inundated with reminders to turn in student evaluations. Students are encouraged to check out these evaluations when selecting courses. I don’t recall any of that in my own undergraduate and graduate careers.</p>
<p>For what it’s worth, my favorite professor in my 2 years so far at university, is an adjunct professor, who has become something of a mentor. I was in a seminar with her where most students signed up…because they liked her(and the material was interesting, but also because she was so approachable and friendly). I feel free walking into her office at any time she’s there, even if it’s not during her office hours, to say hi, ask a question about the course, or, even more importantly, get advice about other major decisions. She’s not my adviser, but she’s proven to be more useful to me than most advisers are, and has really enriched my college experience. She was denied a tenure-track position. You miss out in counting these wonderful individuals if you’re focused solely on FT professors. I often get more attention and support from adjunct professors than FT professors.</p>
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<p>Teaching loads vary from university to university, and from department to department within each university. There is even variance between professors in a given department - some will have reduced loads for a variety of reasons. </p>
<p>Faculty generally have demands other than teaching that need to be factored into the equation - in my experience, most faculty work very long hours with teaching, research, and service obligations - it’s a job that’s never done. (yes, there are lazy professors who once they have tenure give 20 year-old lectures, never publish again, and duck service but I think they are a small minority - most remain energetic/passionate about their work.)</p>
<p>I don’t see anything wrong with adjunct professors, especially in applied fields, or with full-time lecturers who are hired only for teaching and do no research. Often, these people are better teachers than the actual professors are, either because they can bring in a “real world” perspective (in the case of the adjuncts) or because teaching is their whole career (in the case of the lecturers), and they care about it.</p>
<p>Arguably, the worst professors are those who are on the tenure track but haven’t gotten tenure yet. They’re under enormous pressure, professionally, and it’s difficult for them to devote any time to students.</p>
<p>What I do object to is undergraduates serving as TAs, even though my daughter is one of them, and my son also was one when he was an undergraduate. That doesn’t seem quite right to me. In high school, at least the people grading your papers were college graduates; in college, they may not be.</p>
<p>One of the best instructors I’ve had was a grad student.</p>
<p>I had excellent instructors who were actually law/MBA students teaching intro acct. I also had the dept head who was excellent.</p>
<p>My concern is that some TAs are worked too hard. When I was in school, the only TAs were from our school. Nowadays, I read that some adjunts work 2-3 schools, and drive up and down highway etc. They dont have the time they need to do the job right. The colleges take advantage of them. Its not only the number of TAs and adjuncts, but it is how they are treated.</p>
<p>kayf, that’s true. Many adjuncts get payed slave labor. I was once asked if I’d like to teach an architecture course at a local college, but for the time I’d have to put into it, at least the first year, I’d be getting less than minimum wage.</p>
<p>“In high school, at least the people grading your papers were college graduates; in college, they may not be.”</p>
<p>I would think that Professors would be careful enough to pick competent students as TAs or toss them out if they did a poor job. In high school, you might get a teacher with a degree in a different subject and it may be that a college student could do a better job in teaching.</p>
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<p>It’s all relative. You can buy a “college degree” from the Univ of Phoenix. According to Collegeboard, future teachers (as noted by SAT applicants on the interest section) have the lowest mean SAT scores nationwide of any future career…</p>
<p>One of the local colleges in the area has an average SAT score in the 900s. Would you rather have one of their graduates or a Junior or Senior in college with a 1550 teaching your kids?</p>
<p>What this thread makes clear is that there is no easy formula to find out how good the teaching is at a given college. Similarly, IMHO the much touted ‘faculty/student ratio’ and ‘small class size’ are deeply flawed measurements of the quality of instruction offered.</p>
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<p>One of the advantages to an undergrad TAing a class is that they have likely already taken it. They know the material the school emphasizes, how the tests are structured, and how the pace of a semester runs. A number of my friends here in grad school have had to TA for classes they’ve never taken. How do you think the quality of their teaching is when they’re learning the material a week ahead of the class (on their own with no help from the professor).</p>
<p>Also, how do you feel about grad students TAing grad students? Many of us in our second year actually wound up TAing courses we had just finished the previous year.</p>
<p>The problem is how one measures teaching quality beyond the obvious is person is prepared and can speak the language? </p>
<p>A few things that haven’t been considered on this thread:</p>
<p>College teaching evaluations are notorious for creating incentives for professors to simply give everyone an “A.” Students like easy, clear, courses run like high school. They give good ratings for them. Furthermore, students can’t evaluate whether the course has covered the material it should or whether the person teaching it took the easy way out. The only person who can judge that is the person teaching the follow-on course who has a lot of experience judging how well the students know the previous course’s material.</p>
<p>Adjuncts without substantial research reputations are vulnerable to all kinds of pressures to water down the course to get those evaluations up. They can be fired if students complain about course difficulty. Plus, it is a buyers market for adjuncts as a lot of people see it is a resume builder. They may or may not have a current knowledge of the academic work in their subject and a good perspective on it. Graduate students often have similar drawbacks as teachers.</p>
<p>Even Yale makes heavy use of adjuncts. </p>
<p>[YAM</a> Summer 1999 - Who’s Teaching Whom?](<a href=“http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/99_07/GESO.html]YAM”>http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/99_07/GESO.html)</p>
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<p>So are non-tenured ladder faculty.</p>
<p>vicariousparent and others,
There is little disagreement that the measurement of “excellent teaching” is a very difficult task. But it is a very necessary evaluation to make. IMO, great classroom teaching is an essential element of a successful academic experience and some schools definitely do it better.</p>
<p>There are many sources about the teaching that goes on at ABC College and how students feel about Professor Jones or Professor Smith or the faculty in general. Look at things like Sparknotes, Fiske, NSSE, students…review, USNWR rating on commitment to undergraduate teaching, rate…my…professors, etc. Some sources are more credible than others and some are more current than others. But going thru these various sources, as I have over the past several years, it is remarkable how the same colleges are positively mentioned time and time and time again. There are differences and those differences can go a very long way in determining the satisfaction level of an undergrad’s academic experience.</p>
<p>While teaching itself may be difficult to measure, much less difficult to evaluate are the factors that describe the classroom environment at a college. Class sizes, student/faculty ratios, % use of TAs, etc are all legitimate considerations and have some indicative value of the POTENTIAL classroom experience. That does not mean that some schools aren’t fudging some of these numbers (some almost certainly are) or that the size of the classroom automatically determines the quality of the experience (not true as you can find a stinky teacher in a small class). But broadly speaking, I believe that the smaller, more manageable class sizes provide the best opportunity for a quality classroom experience. </p>
<p>Also making for an excellent classroom environment will be the role played by your peers. IMO, that is an underappreciated aspect of the environment and one that prospective students should be closely evaluating. Frequently your peers are smart and you can learn a ton from them, including new ways to evaluate and solve various problems. Interacting and challenging one another assists in the development of one’s critical thinking skills. I mean, what good is it to go to a school with great peers if all you do is sit in classes with 50-100+ students and listen to the lecturer. If you aren’t very frequently in a class setting that involves active exchanges between professors and students or students and students, then you might as well be in the room by yourself or watching it via teleconference or youtube.</p>
<p>Also, as with SO MANY THINGS ABOUT COLLEGES, ask about the SPECIFIC school/faculty/program your child is going into. </p>
<p>Differences within a given college can be startlingly huge (this is especially true when the school is large, the school has a lot of programs, or a lot of professional schools, which tend to be particularly autonomous). So averages within a campus, often typically carefully evaluated to appear in magazines, or meet accreditation standards, may tell you very little about the variance (or about what your child’s experience in a particular program will be like). </p>
<p>That holds not just for this issue, but also faculty involvement, and faculty-student ratio, SATs, culture, service-responsiveness, and so on.</p>
<p>This thread has brought up a lot of great points. In addition to the basic know your child, know the school, I think it stands for make certain that adjuncts/ TAs are treated fairly [full disclosure – I am not employed at a college, nor is anyone in my family]</p>