<p>Pretty good article</p>
<p>Essay:</a> Gillen on students' experiences in college | Inside Higher Ed</p>
<p>Interesting, and worth reading, worth having written. Withholding judgment on “good”.</p>
<p>Two random thoughts:</p>
<p>I get really tired of hearing people whine about non-English-speaking TAs. On the one hand, of course I can see the problem, duh, and I am sure there are situations where a TA’s language skills and personality make learning next to impossible. On the other hand, I am also sure that those situations are far, far, far less common than the whiners let on. Most of these graduate students have pretty good English (although not unaccented, and maybe not perfectly colloquial), and some of the others will be making meaningful progress. All of them have something to offer. Many of them are tops in their field – that’s why they, and not some better English speaker, have the spot in grad school.</p>
<p>It’s part of an undergraduate’s job to get the most out of his teachers, and that includes non-Anglophone TAs. Sure, it’s always nice when you don’t have to work to learn from a teacher, but those opportunities are few and far between. College students should be mature enough to do the work necessary on THEIR end to bridge the language gap with their TAs. There’s real gold in them thar hills, but they have to get in there and mine it.</p>
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<li> The author is completely right that the higher cost of college today relative to basic wages changes lots of things. But there’s another factor that also contributes a great deal. I don’t have any figures or research to back this up, but when I graduated from college there I don’t think there was a tremendous difference in what I might have earned had I gone to work for (a) a commercial bank, (b) an investment bank, or (c) an entry-level management job at an industrial company. What’s more, none of those would have paid me more than, or even almost as much as, a unionized skilled tradesman with real experience earned.</li>
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<p>Now, there’s just an enormous spread between the kinds of jobs new college graduates can get. Kids who land the most desirable financial sector or consulting jobs can approach six figures with bonuses and perks; others may have full time jobs that legitimately require a college degree, but pay less than a third of the top jobs.</p>
<p>So that squelches students’ interest in experimenting and searching every bit as much as the high cost of college. Student after student proclaims on this website that he or she wants a job with a “bulge-bracket i-bank,” or that he or she has a longstanding “passion” for finance. Depending on my mood, it turns my stomach or saddens my heart – these 16-year-olds who are already so corrupt, and so openly eager for further corruption.</p>
<p>I don’t have a solution for this (and if I did, I would be awfully suspicious of it).</p>
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<p>Agreed 100%. Every undergrad I’ve met who made such complaints during my undergrad years and after tended to be students trying to excuse poor academic performance that was mainly caused by their prioritization of partying, beer, and SOs…or other forms of slacking over doing what they needed to stay on top of their academics. There’s also an inflated sense of consumer-minded “I(really parents) pay full tuition so I automatically deserve a degree with transcript studded with A-level grades…my own duty to put in due effort be damned.”. </p>
<p>Such whinings are also a cop-out as having Profs/TAs with strong accents is good preparation for learning how to get along in the professional world…you will need to deal with colleagues, supervisors, and clients who may not have the best English speaking skills. Are you going to whine about it or suck it up and deal as you should?</p>
<p>I think there is a difference when you are paying for a prof versus getting paid to do a job. We all put up with lots of stuff at work we would not as a consumer.</p>
<p>I agree with the students who complain about professors and TAs who don’t speak good English.</p>
<p>It’s different in the working world. Much interaction is one-on-one or in a small group – a very different thing from having someone you can’t understand delivering a lecture and knowing that you’re responsible for the content of that lecture. </p>
<p>And sometimes TAs are the only readily available source of help in a course – but how much help can they be if you can’t understand them?</p>
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<p>Years ago, there were also fewer people with bachelor’s degrees, so that having a bachelor’s degree in a subject not specific to a job being applied for was more of a distinction and advantage back then than it is now. Now there is greater pressure to choose a pre-professional major. For example, common motivations for major selection, even within traditionally liberal arts type of majors:</p>
<p>Biology, Chemistry: pre-med
Economics: similar to Business (economics, finance)
English: pre-law, or preparation for a writing career
Geology: mining, oil, gas
Math, Statistics: finance, actuarial
Political Science: pre-law
Psychology: similar to Business (marketing, consumer behavior)
all majors: research or academic after PhD in the subject</p>
<p>Of course, majors like Agriculture, Art Practice, Business, Engineering, Forestry, Music Performance, and Theater have obvious pre-professional applications (though this does not necessarily mean that job and career prospects are good, or good all the time).</p>
<p>Article worth reading.</p>
<p>Here’s a novel approach. A TA who can teach and who you can understand.
I spent way too much time “deciphering” during my college career and I was not “trying to excuse poor academic performance” in any way, shape or form. Effort for a student should be put towards learning the subject not trying to “bridge the gap” to understand a teacher. The teacher should bridge his own gap.</p>
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Agreed. Most instructors have pretty good English. The same isn’t necessarily true of international undergraduates.</p>
<p>I’ve quoted this before, and probably will again. From a friend who was a math grad student teaching calculus at an Ivy League university:</p>
<p>“It turns out, unexpectedly, that I really hate teaching. About the only thing I like about teaching is watching the predictable progression of my students’ reactions, starting with joy and excitement that they have a native English speaker as a TA, and proceeding inexorably to the ultimate realization that they would have been better off with someone who spoke only Chinese but who gave a **** about them.”</p>
<p>Granted, there is a streak of misanthropy in this guy, but to a large extent he was reacting to his students’ laziness, lack of intellectual engagement, and grade grubbing. I have been hearing the same things, less colorfully, from a family friend who is a social-science grad student at a different Ivy League university. She has been floored by how unpleasant the students are, and how unwilling to do more than about 50% of what she considers the absolute minimum work they should be doing to get something out of the class.</p>
<p>At a school as selective as an Ivy League university, it is likely that the students in freshman calculus are the ones who were not that good at math, but are just taking it to fulfill some requirement that they do not consider to be core to their major (especially if it is a “calculus for business majors and pre-meds” type of course). The freshmen who are best at and most interested in learning math are likely in sophomore or higher level math courses, in honors courses if available.</p>
<p>I know a few foreign TAs who teach math/sciences. They are extremely aware that they have an accent (which embarrasses them) and that they may not be easily understood by their American undergraduate students (which horrifies them.) As result, they GO OUT OF THEIR WAY to work one-on-one with any student who requests it. They put an incredible amount of effort and time into their teaching work. As JHS’s former math grad student’s quote indicates, those foreign TAs may very well be better for students than their native counterparts.</p>
<p>If you bought the TA, you paid for the TA.</p>
<p>You (student) could have chosen an academically superior school that didn’t have 'em. But thanks for giving my D. a job at prestige u, where she will not only lead discussions but teach you the new, required material you’ll never get from the prof, and making it very easy for her to grade you when you haven’t done the reading or the work.</p>
<p>P.S. She speaks very good English, and as good Italian, and if you’d like an accent, just ask and she can produce one for you.</p>
<p>I’m not spending $50k a year to have my kid attend a college that has TAs who can’t speak clear English…sorry, not happening. Hated it when I attended college and I’m not going to let my kids suffer through it. Not on my dime.</p>
<p>In my experience, the TAs with the thick accents are often the ones most eager to help. It’s the English-speaking ones that often could care less about your education. If have a hard time understanding your TA, email them or go to their office hours. If you <em>still</em> can’t understand something (after making a diligent effort- after all, it is YOUR education) then you might have a legitimate gripe. I know way too many fellow students who can’t understand their TAs (and often write them off after a class or two, when you can get used to the accent if you try) and complain about them. When I ask if they’ve tried emailing them or going to their office hours, they look at me like I’m crazy.</p>
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<p>So what are you going to do if one day your kid enrolls in a small but important class he needs for graduation and the sole TA shows up and turns out not to speak clear English? You going to force your kid to transfer to another college over that? </p>
<p>Whether your kid will some day face an actual foreigner standing in front of the classroom can’t always be known in advance.</p>
<p>I’m not going to debate the merits of an American TA vs a foreign TA and any generalization about who “cares more”…I was particularly happy that 1 and 2 chose colleges that did not “use” TAs. I remember from my experience taking a gap math class after BA and before starting at a Big 10 for grad school having a TA that I never did understand. It was a nightmare I’ve never forgotten.</p>
<p>^that shouldn’t happen. No way I’m paying for someone my kids can’t understand…not sure why any sane parent would think this would be OK.</p>
<p>coureur…simple solution is colleges without TAs</p>
<p>Even going to a college without TAs won’t necessarily spare a kid from the life-ruining horror of being taught by a foreigner. I’ve known professors who spoke with very heavy foreign accents as well.</p>
<p>not life ruining…just a waste of money…again, not on my dime. I’m paying for a service.</p>