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<p>…sigh…Do you really think this is far-fetched? People get tenure with excellent research and poor teaching but rarely with excellent teaching with poor research record.</p>
<p>The far-fectched part is that anybody would claim that actually being able to speak English understandably is not a vital element of the job description of a person who is expected to teach classes in English.</p>
<p>I guess I do think it’s possible that a person who really couldn’t speak English well enough might claim discrimination if a university refused to hire him on that basis. I hope he’d lose the case, assuming he really couldn’t make himself understood to a typical student.</p>
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<p>The above prioritization of research over undergrad teaching is not far-fetched…but a reality in most research universities. This is not really a new phenomenon, but something which goes back several decades at a minimum. The very research not only brings in most of the prestige to most research universities…especially the elite ones, but also often the lion’s share of the institution’s income. </p>
<p>It’s ironic that one of the key reasons why so many parents and their kids are so enthusiastic about most research universities…especially elite ones is mostly due to the prestige/money derived from academic research. If that’s the school they want to attend…one downside for undergrads is less attention from the Prof, TAs taking on some/most teaching duties, and large classes…especially at the intro level. My older cousins and friends who attended Cornell, Berkeley, UCLA, Columbia, Harvard, UPenn, Michigan, etc have all experienced this and mostly learned to deal during their undergrad years. </p>
<p>As I said before, parents/students do have other choices if they feel the environment offered up by most research universities aren’t good for undergrad education. There’s always teaching-oriented universities and LACs.</p>
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I know it may be unreasonable, but I want it both ways–I want noted scholars who can also teach. In my own experience (at Yale), I had it for almost all of my teachers–I still resent the ones who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) teach acceptably well. I did have a couple of world-class scholars who weren’t great teachers, and that’s a trade-off. But the guy teaching the intro Calculus section is not a world-class scholar, and there is no such trade-off.</p>
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<p>I did…at my LAC. Three of my Chinese language/lit Profs are well-known/renowned in the Chinese language teaching/East Asian Studies community. Also had a Prof for several courses who turned out to be well-known worldwide in the field of comparative politics according to several Ivy Profs and a couple of Oxford scholars.</p>
<p>I had one class at PSU (long time ago) with a professor who was incomprehensible. It was Intro to Statistics, for non-math majors. Not only was his accent impossible to understand 75% of the time, he also was used to teaching higher level classes, for math majors. So it all seemed too easy for him and he would zoom right through explanations, thinking how obvious it was. He’d say things like “oh, I’m sure you all had this in high school so no need to go over it” - none of us had ANY stat in high school! This was in a 400-person class in the Forum building (for those familiar with PSU) and as the term went on, the class got emptier and emptier as people dropped the class. I finally gave up and dropped the class as well, right before the deadline. </p>
<p>The next term, I did some investigating into the Statistics profs available and picked a great one - he explained everything, gave lots of examples, and welcomed questions. And I understood every word he said. lol </p>
<p>So - yes, it was up to me to do something about the situation, and I did. But there was no excuse having this guy teaching Intro to Stat - because of his accent AND his teaching style.</p>
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<p>This is not an issue of being better or worse graders. </p>
<p>My point is that TAs should have no part of this part of higher education. Fwiw, the refrain heard on CC has been that TAs actually do not teach classes (they only lead sections) and do not grade papers. This denial comes as a great news to most students who attend research universities. The only person who has described the reality is Mini when describing the role played by his daughter at Princeton. The other refrain is that TAs might be grading tests that are … easily graded and previously prepared by the full professors. Examples would STEM assignments. Again, such stories are mostly mythical.</p>
<p>I fully understand that TAs do not form a homogeneous body. They range from PhD students a few weeks from presenting a dissertation who have been trained and vetted through years of study at the school all the way to … utterly unqualified and untrained with all kinds of limitations. </p>
<p>The model is what it is, but with only a few notable exceptions, it reflects poorly on the actual state of our higher education. If it used to be a model, it surely is no longer the case.</p>
<p>R2D2 no like you. /insert sound and robotic accent.<br>
R2D2 give you a C. /insert sound and mechanical accent.
R2D2 almost known as R2PhD2. </p>
<p>[Robots</a> Are Grading Your Papers! - Brainstorm - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/robots-are-grading-your-papers/45833]Robots”>Brainstorm: Robots Are Grading Your Papers!)</p>
<p>I have been surprised at how many intro or “weeder” classes outside of writing classes have few if any assigned essays or hand-graded problem sets and exams anymore. I never had a multiple choice exam in calc, for instance, but have learned that this is becoming increasingly common, especially at state schools, because it costs little to grade. (I suppose it is not just the grading, but the students who return to ask questions of the graders…)</p>
<p>Perhaps schools can start charging extra for students to have homework and exams hand graded, so that they can learn from their mistakes and actually question graders when they are in doubt? </p>
<p>More questions to ask of schools - are problem sets and exams in classes such as calculus, chemistry, or physics graded by hand, with students permitted to see where they have made mistakes and ask questions of the graders or professor if they do not understand the corrections? Are essays similarly graded by hand?</p>
<p>Perhaps schools can start charging extra for hand graded assignments and opportunities to ask questions of graders?</p>
<p>It is hard to maintain consistency hand grading if the class is large, not just that it is time-consuming. There are so many ways kids get their answers wrong. How to assign partial points becomes rather subjective.</p>
<p>At Cal I had many experienced with grad students grading. In my Sociology class (with an excellent teacher, by the way) the prof was really a lecturer and the TAs did all the grading of papers and blue book essay exams. The prof a wonderful lecturer and a leader in his field, but did no grading at all. I had a comp lit class which was team taught by 2 PhD students. They split the class into 2 groups and alternated who graded your paper. They kept office hours in the coffee shop across Durant from campus and met with each student over their graded paper before making you rewrite it to be graded a second time. They were also excellent. These were both non STEM classes, however.</p>
<p>p.s. and it was back in the dark ages - not such good luck with STEM classes, though</p>
<p>A former work colleague went back to school to get her masters and spent a few years as a TA to pay for it. She did indeed grade all papers and tests in her computer science major for undergrads. And had office hours, which consisted of students begging for partial credit rather than asking how to do things right.</p>
<p>And this was at a top three private school.</p>