<p>"its not the age... it's the ability..."</p>
<p>thats what she said :D</p>
<p>^lol </p>
<p>One thing that is hard to monitor with grad students is TA quality - a lot of times they only have to teach a semester or two, so in that sense they don't have to care about reviews. Example - my macroecon TA couldn't even speak English, let alone help us understand the twisted grammar on our prof's exams. The same thing may go for tenured profs who have enough job security that they can teach how they want, but post-doctoral students/fellows going for tenure have a lot on the line with their reviews, and may be motivated to do better as a result. </p>
<p>That being said, the quality of your TA, prof, etc. really just depends on their individual personality and how that affects you. Different people like different teaching styles.</p>
<p>Grad students are cool. AT least they know something outside of class. And they are students too so they're very understandable and easy going.</p>
<p>yeah, the only problem with grad student is that if ur in engineering or science related, ur very lucky if you have a TA who speaks english. They are all very good though.</p>
<p>I'm a former grad student TA at Purdue. I taught two different classes over three semesters. (the "lab" portion of an introductory bio class for bio majors met several times a week, and we went over all the specifics that the prof gave a general overview of first, followed by a plant physiology course) After that, a research assistant position opened up with my major professor, and I went for that, instead. Now ... ahem, this was 22 years ago, LOL, but I don't think a lot has changed. I know with our group of TA's none of us had teaching experience. I was excellent in the first course, very well-versed, and actually a good teacher. In the second course, I was over my head. Plants were not my speciality, but that was the course I was assigned to, as I had done so well the first year with the other course, and my reviews reflected that the students thought I was a decent teacher, and their grades reflected this so the powers that be moved me. Wrong move! I was learning the material as I was teaching it. Because I was diligent and disciplined I was careful at what I was doing, but I believe, in most circumstances, my confidence level suffered, and thus my teaching suffered. My reviews didn't go down tremendously, but I felt I wasn't doing as good a job and that bothered me. Most of my peers could care less; they were totally research oriented. I, however, straddled two schools for my Master's -- Education/Biology -- so the teaching aspect meant more to me than some. I loved the lightbulb moments with students, and I'd meet outside of class in order to try and find a different way to convey something I knew someone wasn't getting. I had the same experience last year, tutoring my D and her best friend AP bio because our school hired a middle school teacher to teach AP bio for her first time. Can't tell you the number of times they'd learn processes (like how things work in a cell) by us creating fictional industrial complexes to describe things. Must have worked .... D scored a 5 as a freshman.</p>
<p>Zebes, who even as a graduate student had grad TA's. Hated my stats guy; couldn't understand a word he said. Thank goodness he wrote on the board a lot.</p>
<p>At a lot of tech schools, TA's are often foreign and can't speak English rearry well, let alone teach a class. I had to drop a CAD class (required for my engineering major) because I couldn't understand a word the TA instructor was saying. I can usually fight through a thick accent or poor handwriting, but this guy just could not assemble sentences properly and convey thoughts to the class.</p>
<p>both TAs and professors are hit and miss. Ive had terrible TAs and terrible professors, and great teachers from both. Both my favorite and worst instructor of my first year were TAs. </p>
<p>TAs tend to be more relaxed and tend to connect with students more.</p>
<p>I get both sides of the argument. On one hand, if you're paying a couple thousand dollars, you want the best. You want a professor who knows his crap to teach you. Not some Grad school or TA who isn't that much older than you, has school work to focus on, and is still learning the stuff they're teaching you. </p>
<p>I think they're better suited for lower level core classes. Major courses need to be taught exclusively by professors.</p>
<p>That said...</p>
<p>
[quote]
Um ya, professors are NOT teachers. They have no teaching certificate and most have no desire to teach. They aren't at the university to be "teachers," they are there because that is where the money is for their field of research. END OF STORY.</p>
<p>So far, I've had quite a few ****TY professors. You see the problem with professors is, they are OVER-qualified to teach. They know their material too well, and have been researching for too long. THey can no longer connect to people outside of their intelligence level. It's just hard.</p>
<p>Granted, I have also had excellent professors teach. They have that ability to connect.</p>
<p>As for grad students. I have not had ONE bad T.A. I have only had one that had a minor difficulty with English, but even then he was able to pass the language barrior and communicate with me. T.A's are down to Earth and are around the same age as you, so they can communicate extremely well.</p>
<p>I find no problem with T.A's, so long as they can speak English. I have met one T.A (not mine thank God) and he couldn't speak English...at all. He was some Chinese guy and well, I don't know how he passed his language exam lol.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yes yes yes! I know EXACTLY what you mean. They know the material cold and so every class is like a presentation...but there's no pressure because you're a student. You're dumber than him or her, and you have to follow them; they don't have to worry about making sense to you. </p>
<p>And honestly, out of 17 classes, my least favorite teachers have been professors.</p>
<p>I think it's a combination of things that have been mentioned here; not all of these may apply, but most often several do.</p>
<p>TAs are still in the process of mastering the subject they're teaching you. They are grad students, not PhDs, and though the difference may be immaterial in terms of the class they end up aiding (and becoming an academic by profession means you are always learning), the perceived lack of knowledge is there.</p>
<p>TAs don't usually get the pick of which classes they end up assisting. This leads to a situation like the one zebes describes: the TA doesn't know the material and has to learn it alongside the students. While this might be useful for a peer tutor, in an instructor one is not looking for a friend to struggle through the material with -- one wants someone to whom they can go with questions. </p>
<p>You don't choose your school based on what grad students they have, you choose it based on which PROFESSORS they have. Oftentimes interest in the strength of a graduate program at a certain university drives this direction in the same way -- obviously if it has one of the top grad schools in your subject, the TAs you get there are going to be on par with your professors in terms of ability. However, that is not why your parents are writing those checks and you're bearing those loans. You pay to attend with other students, not to be taught by them.</p>
<p>Professors that are there teaching have CHOSEN to go into teaching. Not all of them may be good at it, and certainly some of them do it just for the research support, but they accept that job knowing that teaching is part of the requirement, knowing that "teaching" is their career. TAs, on the other hand, are usually REQUIRED to complete a pedagogy requirement before they are able to graduate. This is true whether they intend to spend the rest of their lives locked up in a lab or intend to move on to teach their own classes. It makes a huge difference, and unfortunately you don't get to choose to have the TAs who actually want to be there or the ones that are even able to speak English clearly.</p>
<p>TAs carry a larger load than professors sometimes. They are going to their own classes and/or writing and defending their dissertations AT THE SAME TIME as they're teaching or aiding in your class. This leads to situations like the one I'm currently experiencing in my upper division English class: the reader is a grad student who is also teaching another class, TAing another class, AND taking her other classes. Being taught by someone whose interest and attention isn't even mostly in the subject you're sitting in on is unfair to you and to the TA.</p>
<p>All of what you have said is why it becomes very important to research the school you're talking about. Determine their philosophy. Is it "publish or perish", or are good teachers rewarded? Is the emphasis on undergraduate teaching or graduate teaching? (One way to find out is whether senior professors teach intro courses. If the answer is yes, then it's probably a school that values good teaching. If the answer is no, you may find the intro courses taught by faculty that "has" to teach it, and consider it more a burden than anything else.) </p>
<p>And it's also why a lot of kids choose LACs, which have no or few graduate students, and where professors are hired primarily to teach.</p>
<p>Chedva, </p>
<p>My husband was a professor at Texas A & M several years ago. He's an engineer (Ph.D. in mechanical). Anyway, he loved to teach, frankly more than the research, I think, at times -- well, at least the scrounging for research money; he hated that. The year after he won the university teaching award he left A & M and returned to industry. He chose to focus solely on one area -- research -- because he was having a difficult time giving significant time to two things. (Actually, he gets to teach quite a bit, as it turns out.) Someday, he'll probably go back to a university, but this time ... it'd be one more geared to undergraduate teaching instead of research oriented at the grad level where it's totally frowned upon to spend great amounts of time in the classroom/or out because it doesn't bring in the research money. BTW, one of the best experiences he had was at Rose Hulman, where he went for his undergrad ... probably how he learned to teach so well, he had great teaching Profs.</p>
<p>zebes</p>
<p>I've had actual undergrad students as TA's and I found them to be MUCH more approachable, making the material easier (probably because they took the course recently and know what's important and what's not). I was offered a TA position for a stats class after completing it, but I declined since most students really don't give any respect for TAs, even if they teach a whole section.</p>