Teaching Assistants

Does anyone know where you can find the number or % of classes at a particular school are taught by TA’s? Did not see anything in the CDS and not sure schools are required to report it anywhere.

You can check the percentage of large classes. Classes with 50+ students will almost certainly have TAs. Smaller classes may or may not have them.

Graduate students teaching discussion sections isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A few perks:

[ul][]Since they’re typically younger than professors, grad students remember what it’s like to be a college student and can tailor the learning experience accordingly.
[
]Graduate students have to be on top of the latest research, and it’s increasingly common for universities to require several training courses in pedagogy before students are allowed to TA. It’s been my experience that graduate students and younger faculty tend to be more enthusiastic about incorporating technology into the classroom, for example.
[]Graduate students tend to be much more worried about teaching satisfaction than tenured faculty, as continued employment as a TA and getting a job in academia after earning your PhD are both highly dependent on good teaching reviews.
[
]TAs are usually responsible for only one class per term, whereas professors teach 2-4 classes per semester (2 at research universities, 3 at liberal arts colleges, 4 at non-selective public universities), so TAs are sometimes more accessible outside the classroom. [/ul]
Many people underestimate how qualified advanced PhD students often are. It takes more to get your first faculty job these days than it did to get tenure a couple of decades ago. Supply is high, demand is low, and you had better graduate with a book deal and two or more articles in hand if you’re hoping to land a job in the humanities or social sciences even at a directional public university. A grad student who’s on top of the latest research and spinning out articles each year can easily be as good (or better) an instructor as a professor who got tenure 20 years ago and has coasted ever since.

@DCNatFan: Many large state public universities honors colleges/programs’ offer small, professor taught intro classes.

Just go to an LAC where all classes are taught by professors.

The way it works at my daughter’s large public is that all lectures are taught by professors but then students have weekly recitations with TAs 1 -2 times/week in small group settings. My daughter loves her TAs and thinks they are easier to understand and better teachers than some of her profs.

Agreeing that TAs are not the big negative they are painted to be. My public flagship kid had renowned and expert profs who gave the lectures, then weekly small group meetings (18-25 students) with TAs to work through the material. TAs are Ph.D. students in the department and have often completed the coursework requirements for their own programs and are now working on their own dissertation/research. They are usually in their 20s, energetic, and almost always committed to their TA responsibility as they know that their teaching reviews will follow them in their own job search. While just one student’s experience, my kid had said that his TAs ranged from fine to amazing.

My other kid, at a LAC, thrives on the personal relationships and accountability that classes of 12-25 students offer. He knew he was not constitutionally able to succeed in a lecture class of 100+ kids, and had enough self-awareness to go a different direction than his sibling. To each his own.

Bottom line, TAs are future professors and researchers (as long as the job market cooperates). They can be a terrific aspect of the university experience.

Many complain at certain schools about trying to understand foreign professors (English not their first language) .

And many complain at certain schools about trying to understand foreign TAs (English not their first language) .

I will also say that most classes at the larger universities are not large lectures; in 3.5 years, I’ve had a grand total of 3 classes that were 50+, and only one of those was 100+. Even including those 3, my average class size has been 19. Some of the smaller classes had TA lead sections, while others didn’t. Some TAs were fabulous, while a small minority were merely good. The same could be said for the professors.

I doubt any school makes that number available.

My experience was like the one @momofsenior1 recounts; the lectures were by a prof, and once a week there was a discussion section (although most of them had little discussion, it was mostly the TA reviewing the material). A few classes such as English Comp for Frosh that met 3x a week in small classes was led by a TA, everything else was taught by a prof. And as said above, some TAs barely spoke English.