<p>One thing I hear a LOT about big Universities, especially the prestigious ones are that many of the great professors don't do any teaching at all! It's usually their assistants and the professors are usually just there for research opportunities. I've heard many stories about "incompetent" assistants from students who didn't learn much!</p>
<p>What are your opinions on this?</p>
<p>Teaching quality varies… this applies to both the faculty and TAs.</p>
<p>Sometimes, yes, the professors really don’t want to teach, and they make their TAs do all of it. Plus, some TAs can’t teach either…again, it varies, agree with previous post.</p>
<p>I’ve read/heard of several stories like this too where faculty don’t teach at large universities.</p>
<p>Most big U’s require the faculty to teach 1 course per year to undergrads. That said, it doesn’t mean their heart is in it, or that they are any good at it. </p>
<p>I doubt at many U’s that you’ll find TAs teaching the regular class (except for a few places like a required frosh composition course). The prof drones on in lecture, often to 200-500 kids lower division, then the TA’s handle the once-per-week discussion section.</p>
<p>It is not true that at “big universities” most professors teach 1 course per year! Even at the most elite schools–Ivies and the like–with heavy research requirements, most faculty teach 2 courses per semester, except when they are off doing administration (chairing a department, running a grad program, etc.,) which generally involves a teaching reduction. Faculty also typically do a lot of teaching outside the classroom–for instance, supervising doctoral dissertations, undergraduate honors theses, and so on. The exceptions are some science profs whose salaries are partly paid by outside grants–in those cases, they will not be teaching a full load, but that’s because they are not fulltime university employees. </p>
<p>At big, less elite schools, which don’t require as much in the way of research, the teaching load is typically 3-3, 4-4, or even 5-5.</p>
<p>It’s also not true that at “big universities,” all the classes are big. There are more students, but there are also more faculty. Very often the lower-level or intro classes are large lectures, but the upper-level and more specialized classes are smaller. At many schools (Cornell, UVA, Princeton, JHU, for instance) there are seminars targeted to freshmen. “Freshman comp” and language classes are also typically capped because otherwise the grading is unworkable for the instructors.</p>
<p>Another myth is that large classes are always boring and impersonal. I attended Cornell for my undergraduate education, and many of the big lecture classes I took were extremely memorable. I had a fabulous experience in psych 101, intro chemistry, linguistics 101, genetics, American foreign policy, 20th c. intellectual history, macroeconomics, and English history to 1660. The faculty that taught these classes were charismatic people who could hold the attention of a large crowd, and often they had been doing the same class for years, so they had honed their presentation. I often learned more from a lecture, where everything was clearly presented in a logical order, than from a discussion where things tended to ramble and nobody was really in charge.</p>
<p>The moral is: research the schools where you are applying. Visit, and see if you can meet faculty and sit in on classes. Talk to students about their educational experience.</p>
<p>The UCLA Mechanical Engineering dept review says
[quote]
Faculty members must teach at least one undergraduate course per year, with few exceptions, although many teach more.
[quote]
The other departments have similar requirements</p>