<p>going back 25 plus years at Dartmouth, every class session in every course I took was taught by a professor.</p>
<p>^Well, of course. Dartmouth does not have graduate students. Classes are capped at 55 for reason of space (that's what the largest classroom can accommodate). A prof I know has taught a class of 55 and another of 50 (no TA in either). At colleges with graduate students, classes like that would have discussion or recitation sections with 18-20 students.</p>
<p>I forgot to post that freshman seminars at Harvard are capped at 12 and expository writing classes at 15.</p>
<p>I have one at Brown and one at Vassar. My son at Brown has large classes taught by profs with discussion groups and most seminars taught by TA's, although every once in awhile a real prof will teach a smaller class. It really got to me --here my husband and I have high level MFA's MA's in (end stage degrees) from Ivy and equivalent in writing and work in the field and are sending our kid to Brown to be taught be grad students WITHOUT the degree who may actually have less skill and training than my kid --who grew up in the business afterall. He is in his seventh writing workshop and it is the second time he has a real professor vs. graduate student teaching.</p>
<p>Math and science classes at Brown likewise, very large.</p>
<p>My kid at Vassar has small seminars and real professors for everything even the most basic. I can tell you, unequivocally, the Vassar kid is getting a far better education and if I had it to do over I would probably never have steered the older one to those Ivies.</p>
<p>He loves Brown, loves his friends, loves the life --but I, his mother, do not think that having so many classes with graduate students or in large lectures makes for a superior eductation.</p>
<p>It is possible you could get much more from Brown with more aggressiveness. At Vassar, everyone gets it.</p>
<p>I have said this before, and I'll say it again: At first-class research universities, the graduate students are first-class, too. When you have a bunch of really smart, really motivated students, "teaching skill" is perhaps less valuable than is often imagined. It's just as important that the teacher have something to say -- that he or she is passionately engaged at a high level with the subject matter -- and that he or she demonstrate what it means to be engaged as a scholar at a high level with the subject matter. </p>
<p>Both the professors and the graduate student TAs in my college experience met that standard with flying colors. Most of the TAs have gone on to very successful academic careers. My favorite TAs have been department chairs at Harvard and Michigan, and my least-favorite TA was chair of the Yale English department for a long time. My wife's experience was similar -- a grad student from whom she took a seminar has been a well-known public intellectual for the past 20 years.</p>
<p>But apart from their illustrious later careers, graduate student TAs served an important function. They were a great bridge between the undergraduates and the faculty. Very few 18- or 19-year-olds are really in a position to understand the difference between first-rate scholarship and pedestrian scholarship, and they are rarely ready to understand the nuances of what their famous teachers are doing. Grad students have the time and the perspective to connect the dots, to explain what's going on. That way, when a freshman or sophomore walks into the professor's office, the professor's time isn't going to be wasted, and the student isn't going to look dumb. I had great involvement with world-famous faculty when I was in college, but I would not have been able to do that were it not for the orientation I got from my grad student TAs and their friends. That's one of the reasons to go to a research university as an undergraduate.</p>
<p>At Vassar the undergrads are entirely capable of interacting with faculty without intermediaries. There are so many TAs at these research Universities it would be impossible for all to go on to careers as illustrious as their profs. I strenuously disagree that this is an advantage --I consider it a great disadvantage to these schools, watching my own two go through. My older one would have been better off at a LAC but he will be getting his degree from Brown.</p>
<p>Want the experience of a TA at a top 25 private U? D is third year TA-Humanities Dept (Music).No teaching first year of Grad School. 2nd year,TA'd one general survey class with full prof,did some lecturing,some grading.Collaberated with prof on final grades.2nd year,2nd semester,TA'd lab section of music theory class taught by asst prof. Rresponsible for lab class lectures,q&a's.test review.Collaborated on final grading.
3rd year (current semester) TA'ing for original full Prof,different general survey class.Totally responsible for a 1 credit additional lab,voluntary section 9 students from the class have chosen to add to their schedule.Lectures,tests,grading all her responsibility although final grading will be reviewed by the prof.
She is getting an excellent graduate education,along with excellent teaching experience at her U.When she is ready to look for her first f/t gig, she will be well prepared to manage a classroom.</p>
<p>I have 2 kids- one at Ivy and the other at a SUNY college.<br>
I'm not in the least concerned about classroom size for my Ivy kid. She (and I would think most Ivy caliber kids) will thrive in ANY environment. She has taken large classes and then had sectionals with TA's- and of course she has been in smaller classroom environments. This has not even been a concern of hers or topic of conversation in the 3 + years she has been at Cornell.</p>
<p>For my "more average" kid who is attending a SUNY college. (most SUNY colleges have 5,000 - 8,000 enrollment). No real big lecture classes and no TA's.<br>
This is the perfect environment for her. I'd be more concerned about large classes for the "average student" as they may get lost in the shuffle or may have high absenteeism.</p>
<p>But come on folks- if your kid made it to an Ivy, don't you think they should do ok in almost any classroom environment??<br>
And apart of getting a life education, is to adjust to the environment you're in-<br>
ok- if a kid wants a more hands on environment, they may apply to Dartmouth or Princeton before they'd apply to U Penn or Cornell. But once the kid decided the school environment is ok for them, I think the Ivy League student will do just fine in just about any classroom situation.</p>
<p>When I was at Johns Hopkins as an undergrad, all my freshman classes were large lectures with professors and sections with TAs, except for calculus which was all TA. The feeling we got from all of these professors and TAs is that undergraduates were a waste of time, and a necessary evil that had to be "gotten through" so they could go back and do their research. The calculus TAs were, for the most part, foreign students with a poor command of English who were barely comprehensible. So our freshman courses were things we also had to "suffer through." My H had a similar experience at Columbia.</p>
<p>I hope things have changed, but this was not the experience we wanted for our D.</p>
<p>
[quote]
She is getting an excellent graduate education,along with excellent teaching experience at her U.When she is ready to look for her first f/t gig, she will be well prepared to manage a classroom.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>cathymee, this is wonderful for your daughter. The problem is that I don't want to spend $50,000 a year for your daughter's education and learning to teach. I want to pay $50,000 a year for my daughter's education, with someone who knows significantly more than she does, and who also already knows how to teach.</p>
<p>"At my college, the "opera glass" courses tended to be that way because they were great -- top-quality professors who were also showmen, with the creme de la creme of TAs."</p>
<p>That was my experience as well. The flip side of the big class is that everybody is getting into the class they want.</p>
<p>Everybody has to take a few big lectures to fill requirements, but for the most part, if class size is important to you, you can choose very small classes. It's a matter of willingness to study less popular fields or with professors who aren't showmen. I had friends who majored in Applied Math instead of Economics, and in History and Literature instead of in English, and their class schedules were packed with intimate, intense classes. I wanted more of a mix than they experienced.</p>
<p>I had one bad TF out of about 12 in my time at Harvard. I could have, and should have, switched out of her section, but I got lazy (senior spring). The better ones -- especially in Japanese language -- were among the best, most patient teachers I've ever encountered in my life.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well said .I totally agree.</p>
<p>Tokenadult- Maybe this should be another thread, but how many selective colleges and universities have classes taught by profs, in which English is not their native language and have difficulties teaching in English.</p>
<p>I have been told by two different students at Northwestern that their entry level Econ course was taught by a prof who was impossible to understand. One had a TA who was great and the other had a TA who was also difficult to understand. Have others found this situation to be a problem?</p>
<p>Chedva and Tutu
if you dont want TA's teaching your children then you must not send them to any institution that houses a Graduate School.You will be limited toostrictly undergrad institutions and thats ok,if thats the academic enviornment you choose. The mission of an institution with a Graduate School is to provide graduate level education and train those students in the "art" of the classroom. You can't expect to send your undergraduate to an institution WITH the mission of Graduate level education and not expect TA's in the classroom.
Each must pick what style of educational experience they are most comfortable with,thats why there are different types of educational institutions to choose from. I'm not advocating that one is better than the other,just relaying what D's experience is like for anyone wanting to know.</p>
<p>At UC Berkeley, which also has some world-famous professors teaching the lecture courses, the lower division language courses and freshman writing courses are taught almost entirely by TA's <a href="with%20very%20little,%20if%20any%20supervision,%20by%20the%20way%20--%20I%20know...I%20was%20one">now called GSI's</a>, and there are discussion sections taught by GSI's for large lecture courses; "readers" -- also graduate students -- grade most of the undergraduate papers -- anonymously, for the most part.<br>
I agree that the LAC model has a lot of advantages -- for the enormous cost of private schools, now heading into the $50,000's a year, there is something disturbing about the fact that much of the real one-to-one learning going is between kids and teachers only a few years apart in age, and by teachers, however bright, who have limited experience and incomplete knowledge of their fields. But at least in the case of the UC's, the tuition is only $8,000.</p>
<p>Marite</p>
<p>1) Dartmouth did and does have graduate students. </p>
<p>2) 55 was neither a maximum nor a commonly approached class size</p>
<p>3) Regardless of class size, professors were simply available - during office hours and well beyond - if needed.</p>
<p>and I repeat: every class session in every course I took was taught by a professor.</p>
<p>Please do not "explain" my answers for me. Thanks.</p>
<p>cathymee I expect the role of the TA at any institution with a 50K/year price tag to be one of assisting the prof not teaching the class. Especially, when the institution's literature and propaganda are designed to make parents think profs (not TAs) are the ones in the classroom teaching the undergraduates.</p>
<p>Dartmouth did and does have SOME graduate students, though not in every discipline.</p>
<p>The information came from the prof himself who is in a field that does not have a graduate program. Fifty-five students may not be common, but that's been his experience since he was hired. The class of 55 had a waiting list of 35. He was on his own grading 105 exams.</p>
<p>There are both advantages and disadvantages to having graduate students as TAs. All too often, people focus on the negatives. There can be negatives to having only profs and no TAs.</p>
<p>S1 who attended a LAC (which also has SOME graduate students) saw both the benefits and the downsides of having only profs (being shut out of some classes and having some classes that were too large to have discussions). A class of 50 at schools that have TFs would have had at least 2 sections. At Harvard, there would definitely be 3 sections, each capped at 18.</p>
<p>Just for comparison, I have a son who graduated Williams last year and a daughter there in her Sophomore year with very different experiences. My daughter complains if her class is large (25 students), Most classes are 10-20 and many are 5-10, only professors. My son took 3 tutorials with 2 per class.
Couldn't be happier with the close interactions and attention. I really think that more prospective students should consider the LACs and not be blinded by the IVY name. Just my 2 bits.</p>
<p>cathymee, that's why my d is where she is - at a small university that puts an emphasis on undergraduate teaching.</p>
<p>Here are figures for Harvard class enrollments from last school year: </p>
<p>S right now is shopping some classes. Two had enrolments of 50+ last year, and two had enrolments in the single digits. He went to one of the 50+s and reported it sounded interesting and he thinks he'll take it.</p>
<p>Eons ago as a bright undergraduate I was a TA in both Biology lab and Organic chemistry lab at Columbia. I believe I was an excellent instructor and felt the same way about most of the TAs I interacted with. Being taught by a TA at a competitive school is not necessarily bad at all. I am currently an associate clinical professor at the local university and I have won a teaching award twice. Thus far classes for DS at Johns Hopkins have been all profs plus one grad student (who was excellent).</p>