<p>'What shocks me is not the use of an undergrad TA but the attempt to limit access to the professor."</p>
<p>Agreed. This would not have flown at my research university, much less my LAC.</p>
<p>Truth in advertising matters, too. I don’t see anything wrong with a competent undergrad grading homework in and of itself, but if you promised no TAs, you should deliver no TAs. A student grading the homework is a TA, no matter what you call her.</p>
<p>I agree that the issue is limitation of access, though only if the students HAVE to go through the TA, versus having the option to. I went to one of those “no TA” LACs, and a few professors for the larger required intro classes had undergrads who got paid to grade the homework for those classes with problem set type assignments where the answer was either yes or no. Sometimes older students would also get paid to attend the labs and circulate through the younger students to help guide them, though the prof was always leading the lab itself. I think that’s fine, it helps the students to get paid and it helps the professor not to be constantly wrapped up in busy work. It’s annoying that the TA would say things like “be nice to me, I grade your homework” but I suspect that was meant in jest, it’s just immature and unprofessional. </p>
<p>I’ve also seen professors hire older students as sort of “master tutors” and have those students hold optional study clinics where younger students in the class can drop in to ask questions and get help on assignments. </p>
<p>But I’ve never heard of a prof not being available except via the TA. That sounds like you have a professor there with an ego trip, who feels like undergrad problems are somewhat beneath them. From time to time you run into it, but it’s just one professor for one class. </p>
<p>Honestly, unless you have evidence the TA is taking retribution on students or it’s really detrimental to your student, I would probably do nothing. Yes, sometimes schools that say they have a no TA policy have tenured professors who circumvent that, but I doubt anything you can do is going to put a stop to it. And while it’s annoying, I don’t think it’s a huge deal that’s going to bring down your child’s education. Next semester, they’ll be out of this class and have it well behind them and this will seem like a mole hill, not a mountain.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s really all that unusual to have graders. When I was in college I graded papers, supervised open computer labs, assisted during a computer literacy class (there was a professor, but it helped to have someone else wandering around helping the lost), etc.</p>
<p>My husband also graded papers during college.</p>
<p>Neither of us were work-study. </p>
<p>The college was a private liberal arts college that did not use graduate TAs except in lab sections of science courses and in the break-outs for speech courses.</p>
<p>In no way did I feel that being graded by other undergraduates or having lab sections led by TAs meant that we were not beign taught by the professors.</p>
<p>I have a HUGE issue with the unprofessional manner of the TA. “Be nice to me, I grade your papers” – really?!</p>
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<p>No, but with enough adverse publicity the school might stop making false “We have no TAs” claims and might stop bragging about policies that exist on paper but are not actually enforced.</p>
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<p>I seriously think this was a joke that isn’t coming across as such in the general tone of the OP. People make these kinds of remarks all the time and I’ve never seen anyone take it seriously unless they were looking to take offence (which sadly, does happen).</p>
<p>I’d be very surprised if there were any colleges/universities where at least some of the faculty don’t have some upperclassmen/grad students helping to grade assignments and tests in entry-level classes. It just doesn’t seem like that big a deal to me as long as the student does have access to the professors, when necessary.</p>
<p>Is it really shocking that a professor tells students in an introductory course to ask their questions to a peer tutor first? That’s one of the really valuable function grad student TAs serve at first-rate universities. “That’s not really the appropriate question to ask Dr. X. There’s a really simple answer to that one, and it was in the lecture. It’s _____. But sitting behind that is another question that people fight about all the time. One of the other professors in the department wrote an article about it. Here it is. Why don’t you go ask X what he thinks of that? And then tell me what he said, I’d be interested, too.”</p>
<p>I would also like to say that a university isn’t just a place where people come to listen to professors lecture. It’s a place where scholars gather and learn from each other’s efforts. That means student-to-student teaching as well, often working in both directions. (Think how much the student TA is learning from this process. Do you really want to close off that kind of opportunity in the future to your students who are freshmen now?) If it’s a good college, I would trust that the student TA has something valuable to offer.</p>
<p>Of course, “Be nice to me, I grade your papers” is totally bush league unless it was an obvious joke. And if it was an obvious joke, it was a bad one. That’s going to have to be one of the lessons the student TA learns from this.</p>
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<p>In my opinion, yes. I’m offended by the idea of having a screening process. It creates an atmosphere where students feel that the professor is an inaccessible superstar in an ivory tower, not a teacher who is willing to work with students to help them learn the material. Moreover, if the professor is protected in this way from hearing about students’ questions and misunderstandings, he/she doesn’t get the feedback needed to improve the way the course is taught.</p>
<p>Also, many students prefer to go to the professor with questions because 1) some TAs don’t speak comprehensible English, and 2) it’s a way of getting the professor to know them, which makes it easier to ask for letters of recommendation later. And in some instances, a student may have a class that conflicts with the TA’s office hours but not the professor’s.</p>
<p>I agree with those who say that undergrad TAing is not a work-study job. The jobs are usually offered to students who did exceptionally well in the same course or who are known to the professor to be very competent in the subject. My son got to be an undergrad TA because he had taken several courses with the same professor, who knew that he could handle the job. My daughter got to be an undergrad TA because she got the highest grade in the class when she took the same course that she now TAs.</p>
<p>I don’t find it shocking that the prof asked the kids to ask the TA first. If helping the students is part of the job then answering questions is part of that job also. If students get the answer to their question does it really matter where they got that answer or insight? I think perhaps there might be some misunderstanding amoungst the students, but then everyone has given good advice about what the students need to do.</p>
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<p>At a university, No. At an LAC, especially one that claims to be using no TAs or brags about its profs’ availability and eagerness for face time with undergraduates, Yes.</p>
<p>According to all the “definitions” I found, a TA is one who teaches. In this case it doesn’t seem to apply. I think it’s fine to ask a student to go through a peer tutor to “screen questions”. FWIW, Both DDs attend LACs. That being said, I would definitely make a scene about the perceived attitude of the peer tutor in this case.</p>
<p>^^Calling the guy a “peer tutor” instead of a TA seems like a distinction without a difference.</p>
<p>When I was in grad school (at a research university that made no pretense of not using TAs), I was a TA for my professor in semesters in which he was teaching. I mostly wrote draft test questions for him and graded homework and tests (using a key written by him). I never gave lectures in any of his courses. But my official title was “Teaching Assistant.” Calling me a “Peer Tutor” would not have changed any of the reality on the ground. During the summer and any semesters in which he was not teaching, I was an “RA” - a Research Assistant. Whatever they called me, what I mostly did was work in the lab doing research for his grants and my degree.</p>
<p>My d. is a “TA” at the Ivy most committed (it is believed) to undergraduate education. Actually, it really isn’t true - they have no law school, medical school, or business school - eliminate the counts of those at other Ivies engaged in each of these three, and it has about the same ratio of grads to undergrads of the others.</p>
<p>The school claims sometimes to have no TAs, but that’s because they call them something else. And they aren’t just for freshman courses. My d. is TAing two sections (15 in each) of an upper level elective (mostly sophomores, though). The professor gives one lecture a week. She teaches (all new material) twice a week, gives all the exams, and grades all the exams (the prof. makes up the questions, but never sees the student responses.) And the papers, too.</p>
<p>I did something similar 35 years ago (at UChicago). The irony is this: I likely could have given better lectures than the professor. My knowledge base was more up-to-date; I knew more about the current debates, and current research. And I had better stage presence! What I couldn’t do was precisely what I was expected to - lead a good discussion that would also result in the transfer of knowledge.</p>
<p>“Just was made aware” sounds to me like hearsay or second hand information. Let’s name some names here so we can understand the actual situation. </p>
<p>Even small LACs have large introductory lectures which breakdown to smaller discussion groups. At my son’s LAC the discussion groups were led by professors, not student TAs. The student TAs provided support, but as far as I was aware, didn’t wield the power that the OP describes. The professors, even the most popular, were always accessible.</p>
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Yep, what most of us did. You seem to have had a better support sytem than I did (another grad student handed me the lab book - no lesson plans, no help, no ideas, and I was the only one to teach the lab section for 3 classes a week!)
This wan’t a school that claimed “no TA’s”</p>
<p>I had never heard of undergrads teaching each other, and was shocked when my older D brought it up, so we shoppped only schools that ranked high on Undergrad Teaching for second D. With costs nudging $50,000, if I discovered that I was paying big money for my student to be taught and evaluated by another undergrad, I would be fuming. They push the idea that all courses are taught by professors…</p>
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So, where did she end up attending?
Both of my kids were TAs as college sophomores - both at schools that are ranked as high as it gets on undergrad teaching (one at elite small LAC, the other at elite private research U). All schools that I know of have some sort of undergrad TAs, and it is not a bad thing! A LOT of kids who come for help with homework to TA sections would never feel comfortable approaching their professors with the type of questions they can ask their peer TAs. The question is what kind of responsibilities are given to the TA. I’ve never heard of a TA serving as professor’s gate keeper.</p>
<p>From what I’ve seen, the TA responsibilities at the LAC were much more appropriate than those at the research U.</p>
<p>OP’s situation does sound bad–access to prof should not be limited and behavior of this TA sounds poor–and as a parent paying for this school I would not be happy. But, I am paying for my kids to attend LACs, and it does not bother me that there is a class of 75 at a LAC and that such a class has TAs, or peer tutors, or whatever else they are called. As long as the class is taught by a professor and all students have access to the professor, I think I am getting what was advertised. While all will not be ideal (it never is), on average, I know that my kids will be in classes of 20 to 25, that all of their classes will be taught by professors, and that they will have access to their professors. This is in contrast to the situation at my Big State U alma mater–intro classes in the hundreds, with some intro science classes in excess of 400–the school actually puts more kids in lecture halls than they can hold, kids sitting on the floor in the first few weeks, on the assumption that enough kids will not be coming to class by the second or third week that the lecture hall will be big enough–upper level classes of 40 to 50. 35% to 40% of classes taught by grad students, adjuncts and instructors, rather than full time tenured or tenure track faculty. Very little contact with faculty. Also contrasts with my experience as a TA–as a first year grad student, probably not much better prepared than an undergrad senior, at a large, very prestigious university, I not only graded and ran all review sessions for classes, but taught large lectures on a number of ocasions when the faculty blew the class off on short notice.</p>
<p>I was a Math/Biology double major at Claremont McKenna years ago. I graded calculus problem sets, tutored students in chem (basically was available for anyone who needed help in the evenings at a specified time) and TA’d an OChem lab and an Intro Bio Lab. In both labs, the professor was also there and I would just help with lab set-up and answer questions. I was never a gatekeeper and the professors still had ample office hours.</p>
<p>I checked with both DDs attending different LACs. One school only has TAs in labs so the prof doesn’t have to run around to everyone. The other has TAs in language labs (native born speakers assisting pronunciation, etc). There are also student assistants in the Writing and Math Skills Centers which are available to help students challenged in those areas, and professors in math and science have selected students assist in grading tests. Professors are available to students at both schools pretty much any time.</p>