Student Faculty Ratio: An Overlooked Number

College Search & Selection
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<p>[Rice</a> University | News & Media](<a href=“http://www.media.rice.edu/media/NewsBot.asp?MODE=VIEW&ID=3039&SnID=2]Rice”>http://www.media.rice.edu/media/NewsBot.asp?MODE=VIEW&ID=3039&SnID=2)</p>

<p>“You have before you ample resources to do what you need to do. Rice offers an unsurpassed blend of outstanding students, leading-edge research and dedicated professors to help you on your way. Rice is, as you will quickly see, unusual among leading research universities in that over 95 percent of our classes are taught by faculty; at virtually all state universities as well as too many private research universities, 30 to 50 percent of classes are taught by T.A.s.”</p>

<p>Is that true?</p>

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<p>I guess Princeton Review publishes percentage of courses taught by TAs. I guess I’ll give it a look.</p>

<p>If Rice’s numbers are correct, it does make me wonder. What is going on at these schools?</p>

<p>This is a long article and slightly dated. Sorry.</p>

<p><a href=“UGA”>UGA;

<p>In theory, the apprenticeship model is mutually beneficial. In practice, several factors complicate it. As in the case of Sechandice, many “teaching assistants” are actually teachers of record; they do not assist anyone. They create syllabi, plan class meetings, grade papers, and compute final grades. In UGA’s English department, TAs teach 298 of the department’s 300 sections of freshman English. Factoring in upper division courses taught almost solely by tenure-track professors, TAs and instructors (non-tenure-track faculty) still teach 70 percent of credit units offered by the English department. </p>

<p>In Romance languages last year, TAs taught 195 of the 463 sections (42 percent) offered. Tenure-track professors taught 125 courses, or 27 percent of the sections offered. In math–similar to English and Romance languages in the numbers of students it must educate–only 29 out of 325 courses were taught by the department’s 40 TAs. But, says math professor William Kazez, instructors made up the difference. </p>

<p>Numbers like these make Sechandice and other GGF members suspicious about the apprenticeship model. They wonder: are we here to further our own education, or to act as a cost-effective way for departments to provide core courses to ever-increasing numbers of freshmen and sophomores? For instance, the English department pays a TA approximately $3,000 to teach a single course section. It would cost at least twice that much to have the same course taught by a professor. </p>

<p>“For better or for worse, graduate students have become a full third party in education, along with faculty and administration,” says Sechandice. “The administration knows the faculty couldn’t get along without us.” </p>

<p>Many TAs use their hefty teaching percentages, coupled with the fact that they comprise 26.6 percent of UGA’s instructional faculty, as justification for gaining “regular employee” status. They say they do the work of employees, often for as long as five or six years as they move through masters and doctoral degrees. Shouldn’t they receive the benefits–sick leave, health insurance, retirement benefits? </p>

<p>Labor relations expert Joel Douglas doesn’t think so. “It seems to me that when one is a graduate student, that is not a career. The goal should be to graduate, not to become an employee,” says Douglas, professor of labor relations at CUNY’s Baruch College. “On the other hand,” he adds, “universities exploit graduate employees.” </p>

<p>“I personally don’t believe students are being exploited in aggregate,” says Prokasy. “I view the doctoral education as necessarily including how to teach. We have a responsibility to provide some instructional learning.”</p>

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<p><a href=“http://media.www.jhunewsletter.com/media/storage/paper932/news/2007/03/01/News/Minimal.Part.Of.Tuition.Hike.To.Bring.In.More.Tas-2753208.shtml[/url]”>http://media.www.jhunewsletter.com/media/storage/paper932/news/2007/03/01/News/Minimal.Part.Of.Tuition.Hike.To.Bring.In.More.Tas-2753208.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>For example, the Organic Chemistry II lecture currently has 14 teaching assistants serving more than 470 students. Although the school has pursued impressive measures to compensate for the large class enrollment, many students fear teaching assistants will only lead to less individual interaction with professors. </p>

<p>“Last semester the professor was a lot more available fore extra help than this time around,” freshman Alexia Simmonard said.“It may have to do with the fact that there are a lot of TAs … Maybe having a lot of TAs give him the excuse to not have a lot of student interaction.”</p>

<p>“More TAs wouldn’t mean more large … classes; rather it would mean teaching the large service … better,” Falk said.</p>

<p>However, the vast amount of large classes at Hopkins contributed to the university’s drop from the top 15 in the US News & World Report’s America’s Best Colleges 2007. Sliding from 13 to 16, Hopkins was demoted for faculty resources, which include many factors such as the number of classes under 20 students. </p>

<p>“We are not so concerned with national rankings, but rather the quality of the educational experience for students enrolled in our classes. If we address this as best we can, ranking should follow,” said John Toscano, Professor and Chair of the Chemistry Department. “The number of available teaching assistants does not determine class size. The Chemistry Department has been dealing with greatly expanding enrollments in our introductory courses over the past few years; this is a major factor affecting class size.”</p>

<p>Hopkins has been taking measures to improve the employment of TAs. Last year, Hopkins launched a pilot program that implemented multiple workshops to enhance TA training. </p>

<p>There are currently 2,000 graduate students in the schools of Arts & Sciences and Engineering, and the majority will be TAs at some point in their Hopkins careers. </p>

<p>“One moment they are a student, and the next they are thrown in front of the class. It can be very daunting,” said Allyson McCabe, a director at the Center for Educational Resources."</p>

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<p>[Information</a> About Graduate Student Instructors at the University of Michigan](<a href=“http://www.vpcomm.umich.edu/gsi-sa/teach.html]Information”>http://www.vpcomm.umich.edu/gsi-sa/teach.html)</p>

<p><a href=“http://cfe.unc.edu/pdfs/tasandprofessors.pdf[/url]”>http://cfe.unc.edu/pdfs/tasandprofessors.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p><a href=“http://old.ee.duke.edu/undergrads/undergrad_TA.php[/url]”>http://old.ee.duke.edu/undergrads/undergrad_TA.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p><a href=“http://gradschool.duke.edu/documents/policies_and_forms/Duke%20TA%20Guidelines-%202009-10%20rev-1.pdf[/url]”>http://gradschool.duke.edu/documents/policies_and_forms/Duke%20TA%20Guidelines-%202009-10%20rev-1.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p><a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/09/10/reich[/url]”>http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/09/10/reich&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>[Reinventing</a> Large-Enrollment Courses](<a href=“http://vpapf.chance.berkeley.edu/accreditation/ee_essays_2.html]Reinventing”>http://vpapf.chance.berkeley.edu/accreditation/ee_essays_2.html)</p>

<p>"Large courses, enrolling 200 students or more, serve as gateway courses for the major, function as prerequisites for courses in other majors, and include many first-year and transfer students. In 2001-02, 172 courses enrolling 200 students or more were offered, representing three to four percent of all undergraduate primary courses. Seventy-six percent of those courses were taught by ladder-rank faculty, followed by lecturers/instructors (17%), visiting/adjunct faculty (3%), recall/emeriti faculty (2%), and other (2%). "</p>

<p>“Although the percentage of large-enrollment courses relative to the total number of courses offered is small, the impact on students, particularly first-time students, is significant. In 2001-02, 98% of the entering freshmen class and 72% of entering transfer students took at least one large-enrollment course. On average in their first year, new freshmen took 4.3 and new transfers took 2.7 large enrollment courses.” </p>

<p>So much for categories like percentage of classes under 20 people or over 50 students meaning anything like USNWR would have you believe.</p>

<p>It’s how many large or small classes a student is more likely to take that is important to many students. But USNWR doesn’t publish stuff like that. Because USNWR is not an expert on education. Or in data. It’s a magazine. </p>

<p>Then the link continues about changing the large lecture format…or adjusting it.</p>

<p>“There are as many approaches to teaching such courses as there are Berkeley faculty; however, the vast majority have historically been taught using the lecture format. The traditional lecture will continue to be an important tool for the transmission of information; at the same time, many faculty are exploring alternatives and enhancements to the traditional delivery of instruction. A number of trends are currently prompting a rethinking of large-enrollment courses: institutional and demographic shifts; a body of scholarship on recasting such courses based on what we know about student learning (Gibbs, 1982; Gibbs & Jenkins, 1992; MacGregor et al., 2000; Weimer, 1987); and the availability of new technological tools that can serve pedagogical aims.”</p>

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<p>OP: Stats and methodologies aside, your point is well taken. This was a ginormous factor for my D when she was researching schools, because she learns best in an intimate setting. Lecture classes make her eyes glaze over. Where she is currently, the ratio is 12:1, which is an accurate reflection of class size. All of her classes are taught by professors, except for one discussion section. </p>

<p>At the other extreme, I just loved the big lectures when I was in college; small classes gave me performance anxiety. At my alma mater, a state flagship, there’s an entire building which has nothing but large lecture halls. The grandaddy of them all seats like 700 students. :eek: Which BTW was my favorite classroom on the campus.</p>

<p>Others have said it: Different students learn best in different environments. Know thyself.</p>

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<p>

</p>

<p>Lots of classes curve themselves, due to bad teaching or proper tests. </p>

<p>My comparison was between the class quality. The UIUC class ended up having tons of kids drop and take the class over summer at CC. There was absolutely no need to curve the grades down. </p>

<p>Sitting in and seeing the tests for both classes I can tell you that the ones at the community college were actually more difficult and there were not an excess of As. Obviously, the quality of the students were worse. But, the difficulty of the course was not easier. You teach calculus to 400 students with almost no access to a professor and the class will curve itself. They just hope they have half the class at the end of the semester. </p>

<p>I think you have made more assumptions than I have. The assumptions will always be there about community colleges. That the classes are easy. They do not teach what major colleges do. If you go to class you will get an A.</p>

<p>Calculus is a difficult class(usually because it is taught to students early on in college) with a pretty high W rate. But the assumption that the tests are easier at a community college than a public university and that they have to grade on a strict curve at most publics to knock down students grades is completely wrong from what I have seen.</p>

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<p>Stanford’s use of TAs…</p>

<p>[Contests</a> motivate top students in large courses, says award-winning teacher](<a href=“http://news.stanford.edu/pr/2004/roberts-1201.html]Contests”>http://news.stanford.edu/pr/2004/roberts-1201.html)</p>

<p>Eric Roberts is the principal architect of what was for many years the largest course at Stanford—Computer Science 106A, an introductory programming class with an enrollment that waxes and wanes with the NASDAQ. In a fat year, 1,000 students may enroll, with more than 400 students in a single class. How professors can encourage top scholars in large classes was the topic of Roberts’ “Award-winning Teachers on Teaching” talk Nov. 18 in Building 460.</p>

<p>Success in such classes means supporting students every step of the way so they can do well, Roberts said. It also means setting a high bar. “One of the difficulties in a large class is if you decide that you’re going to curve it rigidly, you’ve forced it into a mode where many people are going to be unhappy,” he said. Roberts favors a grading system that rewards those who meet clearly delineated objectives—no matter how many students meet those objectives. “If everybody does enough work to get an A, then everybody will in fact get an A.”</p>

<p>That’s a big incentive to do well. Further, superlative work in Roberts’ classes has earned A+ and even A++ marks. (The latter designates work that “exceeds all expectations,” according to a jury of section leaders, teaching assistants and the professor.)</p>

<p>Top students also have the opportunity to gain teaching experience after the class ends. Owing to economic necessity and a dearth of graduate students willing to assist teaching introductory computer courses, the teaching assistants (TAs) in such courses at most universities are undergraduates.</p>

<p>“We decided at Stanford to make a virtue of necessity and really train those students to be wonderful as teachers,” Roberts said. Undergraduate TAs also provide “stepping stone role models” that help increase the number of underrepresented minorities in computer science."</p>

<p><a href=“http://stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2007/novdec/farm/news/tas.html[/url]”>http://stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2007/novdec/farm/news/tas.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>"But for all the homegrown training, far more workshops and sessions—89 in 2005-06, for an estimated 1,000 graduate students—are conducted by CTL, at the request of departments. In a recent report on TA training, the center looked at improvements over the past 10 years. In 1996, only 14 of 35 departments with TAs had training programs. But by 2006, just three departments lacked programs, and those three had a small number of TAs who taught mostly graduate courses.</p>

<p>An analysis of a decade of student evaluations of TAs in the School of Humanities and Sciences also shows important progress, according to Michele Marincovich, associate vice provost and CTL director. “We found that the overall scores of all TAs went up a statistically significant amount, from 3.92 to 4.28 [out of a possible 5].” Evaluations of science TAs were particularly en-couraging, Marincovich, ’68, adds. “Our [undergraduate] students tend to have the most problems in the large, introductory science and math classes, and those are the ones that [improved] the most dramatically.”</p>

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<p>One of the problems here is that there is more than one definition of a TA. On some campuses TAs are not allowed to be instructors of record. They can lead discussion & lab sections, grade tests and assignments and hold office hours. On these campuses it is expected that the activities of the graduate students are supervised by a member of the faculty. The ‘overall’ quality of the TAs in these program is often a direct reflection of the quality the institution’s graduate program. These programs attract the best faculty and top notch faculty attract the outstanding graduate students. My campus has strict guidelines on the hiring of graduate students as ‘instructors’. Typically we expect the the applicant to be close to completing their thesis and to have received excellent TA evaluations. In our department we devote the whole faculty discusses who we think should be appointed as a graduate instructor. Graduate school has two primary goals the production of scholars and teachers. Teaching Assistantships are the primary tool we use to teach our students how to teach.
At a number of campuses it is more common for graduate students to serve as the instructor of record. These graduate instructors have direct responsibility for course design grading etc and there is no direct faculty instruction. In reviewing programs I have noticed a negative correlation between the use of graduate instructors and two variables departmental resources and unfortunately quality of the graduate program. Personally, I have seen some situations that I consider exploitive. Graduate students with teaching loads that do nor permit them to do any work on their thesis.</p>

<p>While I work at a large research university I appreciate the quality of instruction offered by the Top LACs. Many still use TAs but in this case they are undergraduates. By the way a small number of LACs (Williams, Bowdoin, Davidson, Swartmore etc) offer outstanding research opportunities for their students. The quality of the programs (instruction & research) is reflected in their large number of graduates from LACs that enter the top professional and graduate programs.</p>

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<p>Appdad, thanks for your post.</p>

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</p>

<p>I honestly don’t remember. It’s been a while. But I suspect it was pretty similar to recent years. I don’t have 2009 figures, but in 2008 Michigan awarded bachelors degrees to 66 Philosophy majors. That made Philosophy the 17th largest out of 105 majors in the College of Literature, Science & the Arts (LS&A). I currently count 24 tenured/tenure track faculty in the Philosophy Department, though a small number of them hold joint appointments with other departments or schools within the Univeristy. Pretty good ratio.</p>

<p>You’re right, English is bigger. There were 369 bachelors degrees awarded in English in 2008, making English the fourth-most-popular LS&A major, after Psych, Econ, and Poli Sci but ahead of History which ranks fifth. I count 72 tenured/tenure track English faculty, excluding emeriti. So there are 5.5 times as many English majors, but only 3 times as many English faculty. On the other hand, with approximately 75 upper-level English courses per semester open to undergrads, I find it difficult to believe that an English major who wanted small courses taught by professors couldn’t fill her schedule with them. The question is what happens at the intro level, and there the answer is, I’m not sure. I know that in Philosophy I was able to avoid large intro-level lecture clauses and TA-taught sections because I was in the Honors Program which had its own Honors-only Intro Philosophy and Intro Logic classes, both taught exclusively by tenured/tenure track faculty. Whether it’s the same in English is something you’d have to investigate. </p>

<p>Now I’m sure in English there are some especially popular upper-level courses that get pretty big, and that many English majors elect to take some of those courses notwithstanding their size. That’s a choice, albeit perhaps not a necessity. And that makes a school like Michigan different from LACs. On the other hand, the trade-off is that no LAC in the land can come close to matching the breadth of coverage of the field, or the depth in particular parts of it, that is embodied in those 75 upper-level English courses per semester to choose from.</p>

<p>The problem with an argument in the form of "I have NEVER heard an English major at a large public university report . . . " is that it assumes all public universities are alike. They aren’t. They differ enormously in their faculty resources, in the fraction of those resources devoted to undergraduate education, in the degree to which they rely on TAs to do undergraduate teaching, and so on. Unless you’ve actually examined the particular university in question, you can’t reasonably assume it will be like any sample of 6 or 8 or 20 other public universities. I don’t know the particulars of the English department at Michigan. But I wouldn’t make assumptions either way based on gross characterizations about what public universities in general are like.</p>

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<p>Bingo! By definition, the A’s will come easier at the community college bcos the competition is less (by your own admission). And, no I don’t assume if you go to class you will get an A. I just assume that to earn an A, you have to beat out ~75% of the rest of the class (assumes ~25% A’s), and I submit that its easier to be a big fish in a “worse” pond…</p>

<p>I know nothing about community colleges in Illinois. But in California, the jucos are easier than the equivalent AP/IB course at a top HS.</p>

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<p>Nope. I taught at both UChicago and the Community College. It was easier to get an “A” in my UChicago class. And the reason for that is simple: the CC had open admission, but maintained rather strict control over grades because many students would be using them to transfer to a four-year school. As a result, the “curve” (though there really wasn’t a curve) began at a much lower level. I never flunked a Chicago student (though I think some deserved it); but I did at the CC all the time.</p>

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<p>From an earlier Stanford link…</p>

<p>"Roberts favors a grading system that rewards those who meet clearly delineated objectives—no matter how many students meet those objectives. “If everybody does enough work to get an A, then everybody will in fact get an A.”</p>

<p>That’s a big incentive to do well. Further, superlative work in Roberts’ classes has earned A+ and even A++ marks. (The latter designates work that “exceeds all expectations,” according to a jury of section leaders, teaching assistants and the professor.)"</p>

<p>I had never heard of a grade A++ until now. An A doesn’t sound so good. :)</p>

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<p>“An LAC with many small classes offers the trade-off of fewer obscure specialized classes for a greater chance of having small classes in the non-obscure subjects that most students will study.”</p>

<p>I think you are overlooking another very significant trade-off in the LAC: the lack of choice of professors, even in popular departments.</p>

<p>At my LAC, I was in a big, popular major (Psychology), and there was exactly one professor who did abnormal psychology, exactly one professor who did developmental psychology, etc. Abnormal psychology is not an obscure subject by any stretch. Suppose I don’t get along well with that one professor, or I think she plays favorites, or she doesn’t like my proposed thesis topic. I’m SOL in that case. I’ve got nowhere to go. And we’re talking about a meat and potatoes subject, not Hittite Cuneiform.</p>

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<p>bclintonk - I said that “I have NEVER heard…” Emphasis on the personal pronoun. Perhaps such instances do exist, but I suspect they are rare. I’ve also NEVER heard of a large public university (here essentially synonymous with flagship, but including non-flagship schools like SUNY Binghamton) where English isn’t one of the largest departments, and large departments at schools with graduate programs will almost certainly utilize TAs. That’s simple efficiency, and due service to the grad students who need teaching experience.</p>

<p>

You’re absolutely right–that’s the benefit/trade-off of LAC/U in a nutshell. As an English major who prefers small classes, I want access to “popular” topics with the best professors in a small class, and I’m willing to sacrifice breadth of coverage/choices for that benefit.</p>

<p>Hanna - So, learn to get along with people you don’t like. You’ll probably meet more students at an LAC whom you don’t like than at a large university, too, since at the U you can easily avoid those people. In real life, you’re stuck with your boss.</p>

<p>I’m not familiar with the details of various schools’ thesis requirements, but IIRC, you don’t have to pick a thesis advisor who specializes in your thesis topic. Indeed, if your thesis topic is rather obscure, there might not be an advisor who specializes in it. How does that change a PhD-credentialed, tenured professor’s ability to advise a senior undergraduate student in writing a long essay?</p>

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<p>“Hanna - So, learn to get along with people you don’t like.”</p>

<p>It’s not a matter of getting along with them. It’s a matter of paying them $50,000 a year to teach me. If we don’t communicate well – or if they’re jerks, or exclusively interested in one group of students vs. the rest, or are otherwise not effective – I’m wasting time and money. Not every teacher-student relationship is equally fruitful. Are you really arguing that it’s up to the student alone to make the course productive? Or that every single professor at a good LAC is equally effective?</p>

<p>I don’t pay my boss $50k a year. I also didn’t choose my job from among hundreds of possibilities open to me. If I had the choice of 350 employers the way I can choose from 350 colleges and universities, I wouldn’t put up with a crappy boss.</p>

<p>And since when are all theses simply long essays? In psychology, as in many other fields, the point is to do original research. A psychology professor who specializes in putting electrodes into rats’ brains has little to no expertise, and likely little to no interest, in how to conduct diagnostic interviews with middle school students. They’re both psychology research, but there’s no way that a professor who does one can effectively supervise the other. In my observation, it just doesn’t happen – people doing psych theses do projects that are ancillary to a professor’s work, under the supervision of that professor.</p>

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<p>Of course not every professor at a good LAC is equally effective. That would be absurd. Yet anecdotally, I hear over and over again about students’ superlative experiences with professors at LACs–with a few bad apples, of course, but not nearly with the frequency or impact that you imply.</p>

<p>You don’t pay your boss $50k a year, true–however, you do earn a salary indirectly through your boss, and that might be a very good salary difficult to earn in a different position. And then maybe you also love your job, just not your supervisor. Would you still refuse to put up with a crappy boss? Maybe you would, but personally I would stick it out because the benefits far outweigh the downsides.</p>

<p>I can’t speak for psych theses. I know that English theses are commonly called “long essays” on the department website, and that students are allowed to choose their thesis advisor. It obviously still involves original research, but by senior year you shouldn’t need a professor to do research in a library with you, and there’s much overlap in applicable analysis techniques.</p>

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<p>“personally I would stick it out because the benefits far outweigh the downsides.”</p>

<p>Sounds like we agree that the lack of choice among professors at an LAC is a trade-off that you initially overlooked, which was the whole point of my post #95.</p>

<p>I agree that you don’t need the kind of supervision, or specialization, in English that you do in the sciences (natural and social). That’s great for English majors.</p>

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<p>Indeed, it is an overlooked minor trade-off IMO, as opposed to your “very significant trade-off.” Perhaps you should ask the many psych and bio majors at LACs what they do if they don’t like a professor; again, I haven’t heard many complaints.</p>