<p>USC is on the big side (16000). Does it have a lt of classes taught by TAs? I would much rather have a professor.</p>
<p>All my classes were taught by professors. Some of the larger classes were broken into a separate discussion session of 15 that was led by a TA. But they were just moderators of the discussions. </p>
<p>The largest class I ever had was 150.</p>
<p>Thanks to modernman, could I get. A few more people’s opinions?</p>
<p>i never had a class taught by a TA. like modernman stated, for larger lectures, weekly discussion sections of <20 students are led by a TA (usually a PhD candidate).</p>
<p>Expect the typical answers that are playing on semantics. The reality is that TAs will play a role in your education, and one that goes well beyond the “TA only lead sections” bull. Expect the TA to participate if not be responsible for the grading, and perhaps even design of the curriculum of a class. TAs might be “more” acceptable in STEM classes where an answer key is all that is needed, but not so much for humanities where competence and knowledge are key. </p>
<p>Some TAs might be qualified for the role. Most are neither well-trained nor qualified. It will not be worse at USC, but it surely will not be better than any other university with a large contingent of graduate students. </p>
<p>If you prefer to be taught by a professor, large research universities are not your answer. Or you can drink the KoolAid.</p>
<p>One needs to only look at the Schedule of Ckasses to know what we say is not “bull”: [USC</a> Schedule of Classes: Select a Term](<a href=“http://web-app.usc.edu/soc/]USC”>USC Schedule of Classes)</p>
<p>Side Note: What I liked about USC is how intimate your individual school is. I went to the Public Policy school which has a small undergraduate student body of ~ 350 and our classes were always very intimate. Dornsife gets smaller with each department. Although Marshall is a pretty large school with ~6k students.</p>
<p>DS was at USC for 5 years and NEVER had a class TAUGHT or GRADED by a TA. They often led labs and weekly discussion groups, but classes were always taught by Profs. And if he needed help, or had questions, the PROFS were the ones he went to , during their office hours, not the TA’s. </p>
<p>USC is NOT a public U, many of which DO have funding problems and DO have huge entry level classes often taught by TA’s.</p>
<p>Xiggi is the one who has been drinking the KoolAid. What his beef is with USC , I dont know. But its getting tiresome…</p>
<p>Menloparkmom, </p>
<p>you’re naive if you think all of the professors at USC spend time grading undergraduate’s coursework. In all my time at UCLA, i only had two classes where professors exclusively did the grading. They were busy with other things including going to conferences, writing papers, or reading journals/books, dealing with departmental issues, dealing with their families, and so on.</p>
<p>Do you think USC really has over 19,000 TAs, and doesn’t have them do grading? TAs grading isn’t something that’s just done in public universities, my brother’s a TA who does grading for undergraduates at Yale; TAs do similar grading at UChicago, and other elite private universities. It’s essentially their tradeoff for getting a living stipend with free tuition. While TAs cost money, they’re still significantly cheaper than professors. There’s no need to get defensive about it, it isn’t a point that’s made specifically against USC.</p>
<p>With regard to your other points, +95 percent of my classes were taught by professors at UCLA. That’s pretty standard at any elite university (and probably at non-elites too.) the same point can be made about office hours.</p>
<p>EDIT: actually, i ran into this on USC’s wikipedia</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.usc.edu/private/factbook/2011/all_byclass_11.pdf[/url]”>http://www.usc.edu/private/factbook/2011/all_byclass_11.pdf</a></p>
<p>it seems that over 60% of its graduate students are in masters programs (e.g. masters of social work.) These people probably don’t teach undergraduates. The same is probably true about their PPD students (which make up another 15% of their graduates students.)</p>
<p>Still, though, considering that USC still has one grad for every four undergraduates (who are doing doctoral research) it’s still pretty likely that TAs are doing some (probably most) of the grading.</p>
<p>i double majored in bio and east asian languages/cultures at USC so i think i am pretty knowledgeable about this topic. </p>
<p>for my science courses, almost all of my work was graded by TAs (PhD candidates) with the exception of a few 400-level courses. TAs did supervise lab sections (gchem/ochem) but in certain cases the professor personally instructed the lab, such as in my biochem course (as well as the honors bio/chem courses)</p>
<p>for my east asian languages/cultures (as well as general education core) classes the role of a TA varied. for the lower division courses, i would have TAs lead discussion groups. for some lower level courses (with over 50 students) they would grade papers and also essay exams. my upper div class sizes were so small (7-15 students) that the professors did all the grading. we didn’t even have TAs for a lot of those courses. there were also a few gened courses (lower div) without TAs.</p>
<p>I’ve never understood why people hate on TAs so much. Really, what’s wrong with them? They’re usually mid-level or advanced PhD students who are at the forefront of their fields; they’re doing innovative research; they’re usually just as knowledgeable about the material as the prof (and in some cases, even more knowledgeable, since they studied the material more recently than the prof); they often care more about the class; they’re less likely to be jaded by academia; and many of them are about to become professors themselves.</p>
<p>This is especially the case when the department that the TA is getting a PhD in is one of the top ones for that field. But even in cases where the department isn’t ranked high, getting into the PhD program can be extremely difficult, and in such cases, you’re likely to have high-quality TAs.</p>
<p>Sure, this isn’t the case for all TAs, but there’s certainly no reason to object, absolutely, to all TAs. Some can indeed be a better asset to your education than a prof can.</p>
<p>P.S. professors don’t do the grading of assignments (though they may do the final grades), unless it’s a small seminar-style class with no TAs. This is the case at all universities, from Harvard to UC Davis to Caltech to Northeastern. Professors have better things to do than analyze the minutiae of your work. If you want to discuss your work, then profs (as well as TAs) can do that too, though that’s a different matter altogether.</p>
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<p>“Huge entry level classes often taught by TA’s” is another myth. There are huge entry level classes with a faculty member as the lead instructor, but with TAs doing discussions, labs, and grading. There are small entry level English composition and beginning foreign language courses with a TA as the lead instructor.</p>
<p>This may be hard for some of the LAC advocates around here to swallow, but the presence of TAs was sometimes an advantage in smaller upper division courses (or honors lower division courses) where a student could be in a small interactive primary “lecture” with a faculty member and have an additional session with a TA – sometimes having two instructors can help explain something better than one by explaining slightly differently.</p>
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<p>What is my beef with USC? No beef whatsoever. What is tiresome are posts like yours that have zero foundation. </p>
<p>I have been here for close to a decade and have thousands of posts. This site is easy to search for posts that include certain terms and authors. It should be easy to find the posts in which I discuss USC in general, and paint USC in a negative light. So, how many are there outside of discussions about football and the Bush/Carroll scandals? </p>
<p>Now, take off your rose tinted glasses and blinders and read my post again. The only time my post was not generic and DID mention USC was this line</p>
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<p>As Clara said in the famous commercial … “where is the beef?” </p>
<p>Pfft!</p>
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This is exactly why people stereotype USC students/fans/affiliates…sucks because a huge number of them are brilliant, but more of them are like this ^</p>
<p>I’m sorry that public universities are not elitist enough for you. I think the more appropriate question is what exactly is your beef with public universities since no one even mentioned anything about them except you.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t respect a university where professors and not TAs taught certain classes - like beginning language courses, for example – or grade papers in intro classes. It’s a waste of a valuable resource, it’s like having a brain surgeon spend valuable time away from the operating room to weigh patients or take their blood pressure. Both TAs and professors have their place and role to play in the classroom; a good university utilizes both to the benefit of everyone including students.</p>
<p>I see this TA issue pop up here a lot and it usually takes the same form: Someone asks about TAs at Big U, defender of Big U asserts that “all classes are taught by profs,” critic points out that reading old lecture notes in front of 300 students is not “teaching,” defenders of Big U finally ask “what do you have against TAs?” and even claim that they may be better than profs after all.</p>
<p>In theory this board exists for the benefit of students - I think that we could all agree that being best-informed is best for any prospective student. Johnny and Jill do need to be fully aware that at many research U’s, many of their courses will be in very large lecture halls. They may have little if any contact time with actual professors, and it is unlikely that professors will ever get to know them or even recognize their names. Graduate students, often with little or no experience, will lead their discussion sections and grade their work. </p>
<p>Big Research U must not think that the above is ideal, because it is never emphasized in their promotional material or stressed during campus tours.</p>
<p>That’s because relatively few classes even have the 300 student format. And the assertion that most profs read old lecture notes is as unfounded as is gratuitious. Here’s an undergrad econ course listing taught by Steve Durlauf-one of the top economists in his field in the world with a standing offer at Cambridge. Does it sound like old lecture notes will be read? </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.econ.wisc.edu/DurlaufEcon3902.pdf[/url]”>http://www.econ.wisc.edu/DurlaufEcon3902.pdf</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/econ/Durlauf/Curriculum%20Vitae.pdf[/url]”>http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/econ/Durlauf/Curriculum%20Vitae.pdf</a></p>
<p>To the OP,</p>
<p>Your class will be taught by a professor. Your professor will have posted office hours when you can drop in and see him/her with follow-up questions or just to get to know them. You will have breakout review sessions run by TAs who are (typically) graduate students. The purpose of the breakout review sessions is to allow the students to clear up any confusions or follow-on questions from the lecture. If you are still struggling with the material, you will need to seek out a tutor. </p>
<p>This approach, with minor alterations, is standard operating procedure at USC, UCLA, Harvard, MIT, Berkeley, Michigan and is in fact the way of doing things at just about every school with the word “University” in its name. If you don’t like/want to deal with TAs your option is to attend a small LAC where professors are more directly involved thanks to smaller class sizes.</p>
<p>Will a TA occasionally lead a lecture? Yes. But usually it will be in an area that they have particular research expertise. </p>
<p>Are all professors great teachers? Are all TAs bad teachers? No. Like all human endeavors, there is a range of ability and execution. The TA discussion is the inverse of the “We have more Nobel Laureates than you do” argument. In certain situations your TA may do a better job explaining a concept than the professor. Just because you have a great level of expertise in a subject doesn’t mean you have the first clue on how to teach it. Just look at the great athletes who have gone on to become spectacularly horrible coaches (e.g., Isaiah Thomas).</p>
<p>At universities TAs exist at most every level of class taught. As you get into higher level classes and class size gets smaller there will be fewer TAs. But in all likelihood the TA sitting in on a seminar section will be nearly as well versed on the subject as the professor leading the class. TAs are professors in training the same way a Resident Surgeon at a teaching hospital is ‘in-training’. The only difference is you’re awake when dealing with a TA, you’re asleep and may never know if the lead surgeon did your operation or the resident.</p>
<p>Yet another USC thread where UCLA supporters ■■■■■. What I find hilarious that you all assume that USC administers and teaches exactly like UCLA. That could not be further from the truth. </p>
<p>But I digress, there is no reason why UCLA students/fans should have posted on this thread. All of your jealous posts are sophomoric and scream of insecurity and fear.</p>
<p>Re: #15</p>
<p>The trade-off with the LAC model of small faculty-led classes at the lower division level is that it consumes more faculty teaching time on the lower division courses, which often means fewer offerings at the upper division level, or less frequent offering of some courses at the upper division level (e.g. once every two years – too bad if you miss your one chance to take it because of a schedule conflict or you are studying abroad or whatever).</p>
<p>Then again, if you want the greater upper division offerings at an RU (and are not so advanced that you will be taking lots of upper division courses in your first two years), but want small classes at the lower division level, you can attend a community college for two years, then transfer to an RU. But community college may be heresy to the prestige-seekers here.</p>
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<p>It’s ironic that you call our posts “sophomoric” considering that all the posts you direct towards us are nothing but ad hominems.</p>
<p>Don’t be such a UCLAphobe man 
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