Ivy Alumni and Current Ivy Parents: What's the Real Deal on Class Size and T.A.s?

<p>yes, literary arts is, essentially, the creative writing program --poetry, fiction, playwriting, etc., taught by TAs and profs, depending on the section. But my son had a TA for linear algebra as well: JUST a TA for the entire class, an excellent teacher btw, but a TA. I can't say he would have learned more from a full prof, but in the writing workshops it makes a big difference --imo, a critical difference.</p>

<p>As I said, I am in the writing business as is husband for decades, and we ourselves are products of these master's programs. I have taken workshops at the Y in NYC with famous writers --you don't need to go to an Ivy to get the best, but to say in this venue that there is no difference between a TA and Jerome Charyn or IB Singer or whomever is simply ridiculous. There is a world of difference --most people who think Ivy think their kid is getting that top calibre of input, but it isn't always true.</p>

<p>What can I say --I wanted my kid at Brown to be able to avail himself of greater expertise than he had at home growing up, that is what I expected and thought would be available to him there, but it has not always been.</p>

<p>Blossom --If you haven't been somewhere in 25 years, I think it's safe to assume you no longer may know what it's like in its current form.</p>

<p>There is such a variation of practices across the so-called Ivies that it is impossible to generalize. I was inspired by Cloverdale's posting to check out the creative writing offerings at Harvard. ALL classes in that program are limited to 15; many are taught by well-known writers such as Jorie Graham; Seamus Heaney; Jamaica Kincaid; James Woods; Sven Birkerts, and so on. </p>

<p>It's a good idea to consult course catalogs before deciding where to enroll.</p>

<p>cloverdale, just as I thought it was important to acknowledge that you were being accurate about your son's experience, I think it's also important to acknowledge that (1) writing programs are odd beasts in a university setting, not usually taught by tenured or tenure-track professors, and (2) Brown has made a decision to offer an enormous number of writing courses -- far more than any other equivalent university I have seen, as well as to have what looks like a pretty large MFA graduate program, something that doesn't exist at its peer institutions. In other words, the large number of graduate student teachers your son has had is pretty unique to his major at his college, and it's a program that doesn't exist at most peer institutions.</p>

<p>It's also a little disingenuous to suggest that a kid could go from NYC to Providence for greater expertise in fiction and poetry than was available to him at home.</p>

<p>re marite's cross-post: Without checking, I suspect Brown's creative writing program is much, much bigger than Harvard's, while still featuring small classes. There are definitely big names on the list, but it looks pretty much that anyone who wants to take a poetry writing class probably can. I'll bet that isn't always the case at Harvard.</p>

<p>I doubt that either of them can hold a candle to Bard's.</p>

<p>The Creative Writing program at Harvard is part of the larger English and American Literatures Department and is small indeed. Many (most?) of the classes require a portfolio for admission, but I know a young woman who took Amitav Ghosh's class as a freshman (he'd been visiting regularly from NYU). She was very glad she did because at the end of the term, he announced he was not going to be teaching any longer in order to concentrate on his writing (he does that regularly, apparently). </p>

<p>Mini: Yes, I assume that Bard's program is larger than H's.</p>

<p>Blossom, I never knew you are an alum of Brown, after years of reading your posts :D. </p>

<p>Well, I guess ya learn something new every day. Cloverdale, my kid is likewise a senior at Brown and from all I have read about the school and from her own experiences, I thought all courses were taught by professors and I do know that all professors must teach undergrads. But maybe it is different in the Literary Arts Dept. which are the writing courses meant to be small groupings. I am working with a student applying there for that very program. </p>

<p>However, many posts back, you wrote asking if Ivies, such as Brown, are "worth" it and that they are not "better" and that maybe people just go for the prestige then. I know my kid never picked it for prestige. She also would not have looked into this professor/TA issue (has only had professors except for sections). She has taken large and small classes, too. She just picks what she wants to take. We don't think Brown is a better academic education. What we think and know is that our child LOVES going to Brown. For us, THAT is what it is about and THAT is priceless. Her experiences and opportunities have been all she could have hoped for. Is Brown better than a non-Ivy? I wouldn't know or care. I just know that she found a really really good match for what she likes and is thriving. I don't care the class size, the credentials of the teachers and all these other factors. I just know the school has been great for her. I know you sound less than pleased but a lot of what you are saying is comparing the school to your other child's school and they are different schools in many ways beyond who teaches the classes. I also know that as far as classes go, the student gets to pick them at Brown. Some are picking large classes or classes with sections led by a TA. They obviously do not mind as they have a choice. I know the class my D is the TA for is a very popular class with an award winning professor. If kids flock to it, it is for a reason. They could have taken something else with 18 students with no sections and no TA. </p>

<p>So, my D didn't pick Brown for any of these reasons and her satisifaction there is not tied to these factors either. I do believe she is getting a great education. I'm sure a great education could be had at many places that are not an Ivy. It is worth the money to us for the total sum of the educational experience she is having. </p>

<p>By the way, when she picked colleges, she never got into the LAC vs U thing. She just picked schools she liked. A few were LACs and some were U's, though none were huge U's. So, the LAC vs. U didn't even enter into her mind, nor mine. She just picked schools. My other D is in a very large U but I believe all ten of her current classes have less than 20 in them. She has no TAs at present. She didn't pick it over such factors or over LAC or U or size. She also feels like he made the perfect match. For us, that is all that matters and yes, it IS worth it. </p>

<p>By the way, perhaps Literary Arts by the virtue that it wants to have many small sections, utililzes TAs for those, similarly to what may occur in a foreign language conversational type class that really needs to be kept small.</p>

<p><a href="mini:">quote</a></p>

<p>The funny thing about being a TA - I was one at Chicago. The reality was that I could deliver a lecture much, sometimes much MUCH better than the full tenured faculty, sometimes even the more famous ones. I was often better read in the most recent research, more up-to-date with current academic currents, and I could better relate to those to whom I was speaking. What I was NOT well-prepared to do was to deal with all of the really good questions that came up in the class discussions I led, and which would have required a lot of experience to deal with well.

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<p>Absolute gold mine of a posting by mini in #65. I highly, highly recommend a that posting in its entirety to anyone looking for a reality check on the virtues and vices of grad student teaching. It accords perfectly with my experiences and numerous recounted experiences of others.</p>

<p>Well done.</p>

<p>I knew nothing about Brown's literary arts department until I just spent some time browsing on its website and on the online catalog. While clearly TAs teach many classes, it seems pretty clear that the professors also teach. The 17 professors (some of whom are on sabbatical) are teaching more than 30 classes this 2007-08 school year. There seem to be more than double that number of classes offered. Based on those numbers, I would think that a student should be able to have writing classes that are taught by professors -- perhaps not all their classes, but certainly some. </p>

<p>I also went to Brown, long time ago, and took a writing class with Michael Harper. He's still there, I see.</p>

<p>sooz --I did not say people chose Brown for the prestige (although some do) --I SAID that when all is said and done, in some areas they may take away more prestige than quality because of the TAs --especially when compared to some other schools. My son loves Brown too: I STILL do not feel, in retrospect, that it gave him the best education he could have had in his major --specifically because of the TA thing. There may be all kinds of explanations for this --but who cares, at the end of the day it is impossible to refute our experience. I am just the messenger here. The OP on this thread asked about class size and TAs and I answered that question per my experience. I think you can see that my experience is real and not misreported. There ARE many mid-sized and small seminar style classes at Brown, and many large, lecture-style classes --and there is often much choice, but, depending upon the department, you may have heavy interaction with TAs on some level, and not by choice, and the same is true of Columbia. It is the nature of the beast. I have expressed some displeasure at this situation and others have jumped in to explain why it may be positive: All these things are value judgments. What is not a value judgment is that it occurs.</p>

<p>Very, very interesting thread!</p>

<p>JHS --I am NOT comparing NYC to Providence, I am comparing the university instructors to my small nuclear family. I wanted my son to be able to get more expert input from his literary professors than he can get from his father or me. We are professional writers but not accomplished novelists, poets or playwrites, so I do not think this expectation unreasonable at all. I do not consider myself the last word on any level in critiquing fiction, even though I can do it --and an MFA alone, let alone being in such a program without having even graduated, does not make you that. So when the instructor knows even less than me, to me that is something of note. I am hardly the bar. Afterall, at an Ivy ...that is what I am saying.</p>

<p>cloverdale7:</p>

<p>I thought you were comparing Brown to the 92nd Street Y in New York. You are probably going to get glitzier writing teachers at the Y, of course.</p>

<p>The whole question of creative writing as a major is, well, a question for me. I have thought about it a fair amount because my daughter is interested in it a lot, too. She made a deliberate choice to go to a college without a big writing program, but that's a choice she regrets sometimes, or at least wonders about.</p>

<p>The Yale of my youth produced more than its fair share of writers, without offering more than a handful of writing courses. They were very small and very hit-or-miss to get into. No one could take more than one of them, and many people who wanted to be (and became) writers took none. Today, most of the prestige universities and LACs seem to offer a modest menu of writing courses, often taught by well-reputed authors (like those named by marite, but Harvard, as usual, probably leads the pack in name value). I am fine with that as a form of support for quality literary authors who could not earn a living on their sales, but I am very ambivalent about "writing" as an undergraduate major. I am a liberal education guy, and that smacks of quasi-professionalism, sorry. For me, the point of college is to develop a background so that you have something to write about. And I've never seen any standard for what constitutes appropriate scholarly and educational standards in the writing game, except for getting good reviews in the New York Times and selling some-but-not-too-many books (unless Oprah plugs you).</p>

<p>Brown has chosen a different path. It's not unique -- lots of other schools do something similar, just not schools like Brown. It offers dozens of writing courses, including multi-year progressions in different genres, and enough of them so that they seem open to all comers, or close to it. It also has what looks like a largish writing MFA program, which of course helps support more brand-name faculty but also dilutes their attention to undergraduates.</p>

<p>I don't know that I like the choices Brown has made in this area, and I would have the same grumpiness cloverdale7 does over paying for Brown and getting a bunch of courses taught by second-year MFA students. But the program is not typical of what Brown does in other areas, and it is transparent: a student who decides to concentrate in Literary Arts there certainly knows what he or she is getting into.</p>

<p>I'll just give you the bottom line on TAs at Brown though I haven't read the entire thread.</p>

<p>There are only three places at Brown where TAs lead classes. Over 95% of our classes are faculty taught. The exceptions are:
Introductory and Intermediate Literary Arts courses. Mind you, the course I took in Fiction taught by a TA was the best course I've taken to improve my writing ever.</p>

<p>Math-- Calculus through Linear Algebra. There are a couple reasons for this-- large teaching load on the math department, disinterest in higher level mathematicians in teaching lower level courses, and finally, as part of their graduate school training Brown mathematicians are expected to prepare to become professors themselves and therefore have teaching requirements. That being said, there is always at least one section of the course led by a full time faculty member (and it's often the least popular section because it's often the worse taught section). If you want a faculty member here, you'll get one.</p>

<p>The last exception is language courses which are often taught by native speakers, though they do require a significant amount of knowledge about both languages. For instance, last year a Korean professor went on sabbatical and we did not offer Korean though we have more Korean students then from any other foreign country other than Canada here at Brown (maybe it's 3rd to Singapore... but I doubt it). No one had what Brown considered to be necessary mastery of both languages that they were able to teach effectively so we didn't offer the course.</p>

<p>As far as class size, as a current junior I've never had a semester where I did not have a course with less than 10 students in it even as a science concentrator. I've had two courses where there were 2 professors in the room, at once, teaching less than 20 students. I've had courses where the professor also taught my lab, with a TA, with only 11 students.</p>

<p>Classes at Brown (other than unavoidable things like Intro to Econ, Intro to Chem) are largely quite small, and any course with over 40 students must provide a break out discussion section, often led by a TA, to provide more personal attention to students.</p>

<p>Cloverdale, I find your criticism to be interesting, but absurd. Brown's program in LA has been structured this way for quite some time and is still considered to be one of hte best departments to study in in the country. Not only that, but we don't hide the fact that many LA courses are taught by TAs. It would have been easy to disregard the program on that fact with a little research when applying, but your assertion that he's not learning what he should be seems odd since he is coming out of one of the top dept in the country for that work. Your expectation, as an expert, is considerably higher, it would seem, than any department is really offering, if one is to expect Brown's status in this area to be legitimate.</p>

<p>Brown's Literary Arts website lists a number of well-known writers. Are they not offering classes?</p>

<p>What JHS said is dead on and was written while I was typing-- it's transparent in LA and it is the only department that does this.</p>

<p>On the liberal education front, I would make this argument for keeping LA:
1) It only requires 4 LA classes
2) The other six courses it requires are reading intensive courses that can come from various depts, those listed as likely candidates are:Africana Studies, American Civilization, Classics, Comparative Literature, East Asian Studies, Egyptology, French Studies, German Studies, Hispanic Studies, Italian Studies, Judaic Studies, Linguistics, Literatures and Cultures in English, Middle East Studies, Modern Culture and Media, Music, Portuguese and Brazilian Studies, Slavic Studies, South Asian Studies, Theatre, Speech and Dance, and Visual Arts.</p>

<p>So basically, it's not just a concentration designed to teach you the art and practice of writing. In addition, it's only a 10 course concentration, so you still have 22 courses of completely elective education to build a strong liberal education behind you, as opposed to say, a Chem major like myself with 20 requirements.</p>

<p>Clicking through the course numbers, yes, most of those writers are teaching undergraduates on the 100 level (primarily undergraduate concentrators), although you would first take courses like LR11 (intro to fiction/poetry/screen writing, depending on section) and then often an intermediate course, which is by permission only which is, I believe, 50/50 on professor or graduate students teaching. Beyond that, you have access to those courses with professors.</p>

<p>Some direct information on class size:
<a href="http://brown.edu/Administration/Institutional_Research/documents/TABLE19A.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://brown.edu/Administration/Institutional_Research/documents/TABLE19A.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Marite: As I said in my earlier post, I counted more than 30 classes being taught in the 2007-8 school year by professors in the literary arts department.</p>

<p>Sly_VT:</p>

<p>Oops, missed that info!</p>

<p>Copying from a recent post of mine in the Columbia forum:</p>

<p>I took 30-40 classes while at Columbia, and I can safely say that a TA (i.e. a grad student, not someone with a Professor title) was the chief instructor for... 2 of them. Music Hum and UW. And the Music Hum guy was an accomplished modern composer, a hilarious german guy named Carl, and there were 21 people in the class. TAs were probably my main source of learning for a further 3-4 classes (the huge lecture classes like History of NYC or Physics E&M, where we had a discussion recitation). And even in those cases, the professors were still accessible and helpful. Every single other class was taught by a professor, many of whom were spectacular at teaching and generous with their time outside of class.</p>

<p>(I was class of '06)</p>