<p>One of the Yale Admissions Offices favorite selling points to prospective students that, unlike at many other large research universities, all of Yales tenured professors in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences teach undergraduate courses is widely believed by students and faculty.</p>
<p>But its not that simple. In fact, there is no policy requiring professors to teach undergraduates, and in any given semester, a handful of them, for a variety of reasons, do not.</p>
<p>According to this years Yale College admissions viewbook, 100 percent of tenured professors in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences teach undergraduate courses. Interviews with professors in several departments reveal that faculty members believe this to be a rule. However, Deputy Provost J. Lloyd Suttle confirmed Thursday that no such policy exists.</p>
<p>Indeed, a search on the Online Course Information Web site reveals at least a dozen Yale faculty members who are not teaching undergraduate courses this year. In many cases, Yale College students still have the opportunity to be taught by these faculty members if they enroll in graduate-level courses, and administrators said that (while they do not have formal records) they have not identified any professors who routinely do not teach undergraduates.</p>
<p>Still, admissions representatives often use the idea that professors must teach undergraduates to emphasize Yales focus on undergraduate teaching.</p>
<p>The bigger myth is the notion that every professor is automatically a better teacher than every TA. Or the implication that a Nobel laureate is a better teacher than every other professor.</p>
<p>As one of the comments on that article says, “I’d say that a mere 12 faculty members without teaching responsibilities for the current academic year out of a 3,000+ university-wide faculty – most of which is part of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences – is a pretty admirable stat.”</p>
<p>Official statistics show 420 tenured faculty in Arts and Sciences. When you include everyone, e.g. non-tenure, term faculty, the total number in Arts and Sciences is 1109. So it would be inaccurate to say “most” of the 3000+ Yale faculty are in Arts and Sciences.</p>
<p>The text of the article says they found “at least a dozen” without undergraduate teaching responsibilities when they searched the online database, meaning they would’ve found more if they had bothered to search with each professor’s name. So you can not use the phrase “a mere 12”.</p>
<p>Whether it’s a dozen or 25, I don’t understand the great revelation of this article. If some faculty in a given semester don’t teach undergrads…so what? Is the issue that the Admissions office is being misleading?</p>
<p>(And just as an anecdotal point, D, who is a senior, has never had a TA teach one of her courses. In a couple of cases, as vicariousparent points out, the TA was actually a better teacher than the prof, who couldn’t communicate the material as well. This tended to happen in the ‘science for non-scientists’ type of courses.)</p>
<p>And the BIGGEST myth is the notion that every TA is automatically a better teacher than every layman, or the implication that a layman is a better teacher than every hobo.</p>
<p>That’s why I’m opening up Hobo University in Hoboken. Taught entirely by hoboes. It costs only $10000 a year to attend and you get an education that’s potentially even better than the one you’d get at Yale!</p>
<p>^ If you’re trying to make an actual point, I’m having trouble seeing it.</p>
<p>Yale’s reputation, in terms of its undergraduate focus, is likely known to academics around the country. Those who do become faculty at Yale are likely fully aware of college’s reputation, and are thus willing to teach undergrads. Regardless of the fact that a handful don’t, the rest do.</p>
<p>Well, the obvious question is, of course, whether this “undergraduate focus” thing is itself a fraud. </p>
<p>Liberal arts colleges can rightly claim to have an undergraduate focus because they don’t have grad schools. The official statistics show that 2/3 of the Yale faculty belong to professional schools so the university as a whole can’t possibly be “undergraduate-focused”. The remaining 1/3 of the faculty in Arts and Sciences must divide their time between teaching undergraduates, graduate students, and doing high quality research. Yale professors have 24 hours a day just like everybody else. If they are truly “undergraduate-focused” and spend much of their time interacting with undergraduates and planning lectures, then simple logic dictates that they obviously will have less time for their graduate students (and will be lousy Ph.D. advisors) and they will also have less time for their scholarly work (and will generate less cutting-edge research than their similarly brilliant colleagues at comparable universities) and/or less time for family. </p>
<p>I would be interested in hearing some CONCRETE examples of how Yale’s supposed “undergraduate focus” actually translates into significant differences in student experience relative to peer research universities.</p>
<p>Judging from some of the comments on the article, quite a few Yalies themselves do not buy this “undergraduate focus” thing:</p>
<hr>
<p>Another myth exposed.</p>
<p>The claim that Yale is so much better, and “undergraduate-focussed” than “other large research universities” (hint-hint who we’re talking about!) has always been phony.</p>
<h2>Now that the facts are grudgingly revealed, the rationalizing and obfuscating gets turned up a notch.</h2>
<p>The “problem” is the phoniness of the claim, meant to tout Yale’s superiority.</p>
<p>I don’t think there is a major problem with assistance provided by graduate students - either at Yale or at the unnamed “other major research universities” where the practice is substantially similar - no matter what the tour guides say.</p>
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<p>Ordinarily this bragging about “all the professors teach”, and “no grad students teach”, and “Professors rather than TA’s interact with undergrads” is the sort of thing you hear from admissions officials at the smaller liberal arts colleges.</p>
<h2>They are trying to make a virtue out of necessity: obviously, if you have no graduate programs, you won’t have any grad students or TA’s to deal with, for good or ill. The flip side of the coin is that the best professors - and those doing the most significant work on the frontiers of knowledge - are far more likely to be found in those “large research universities”.</h2>
<p>One of the 10 Worst Things About Yale: awful sections with clueless, talentless, tasteless, incompetent-but-high-scoring grad students.</p>
<p>Unless one has been an undergrad at two such universities, concrete examples are going to be a bit hard to come by. All you really have is anecdotal evidence, some of which will be positive, and some negative. Are you a HS student, trying to figure out whether or not to apply to Yale?</p>
<p>I’m involved in a research project with a professor at a major university. He supervises 5 PhD students and teaches two undergraduate courses, and has published in Science, very prestigious scientific journal. He also has two kids and regularly takes time off to spend with them. </p>
<p>It’s definitely possible.</p>
<p>And, if you look closely at the comments on the YDN article, you’ll surely realize that you picked the 4 negative comments out of the 30-something good ones.</p>
<p>ALSO, in regards to the final comment you posted: sections and lectures are two entirely different things. Lectures are all taught by profs, while sections are essentially sessions during which you go over what was taught in the lecture. Often, sections are “taught” by TAs, but that’s because they’re sections, and not lectures or classes. So, that comment doesn’t support your cause.</p>
<p>A long time ago, as a Yale undergraduate, I had more personal contact and relationship with famous professors in my field than (a) anyone I knew elsewhere, and (b) it would have been possible to have elsewhere (because of the number of such people at Yale).</p>
<p>One such professor had not taught undergraduates in 16 years. It was a little gimmick based on the fact that his department did not exist in the College, and there were only a couple of professors who had appointments ONLY in that department. He met with me (at my request) several times in his office to suggest reading programs I could undertake, and what gaps in my knowledge were most important to fill. While I was there, he decided to start teaching undergraduates again – first in a fabulous seminar, with 15 people (including me), and then a lecture class that he co-taught with another professor that was so hot they had junior faculty as TAs (and each of them served as his own TA for one section, too).</p>
<p>I never, ever had trouble taking or getting permission to audit a graduate level class.</p>
<p>Professors in general were extraordinarily willing to direct research, meet with me to discuss it, and read and comment on essays. One semester, there was a prominent visitor, who wasn’t teaching any undergraduate courses. Except (1) he gave a sensational guest lecture to a survey course I was taking, and (2) he sponsored a directed reading course for me, and met with me for an hour every other week about it, and went back and forth on my paper. Because I knew he was there and asked him.</p>
<p>Now, in form this is no different from any LAC. What made it different was that these people were the top people in their field, then. Any particular LAC might have 0-1 people with an actual scholarly reputation in their department, and might bring in a couple of prominent guest lecturers each semester. Yale had 20-30 people with top reputations, a weekly stream of visitors, and a stable of graduate students many of whom were at the top of the field 15-20 years later. For the most part, the grad student TAs I had in my major field were really exciting scholars, and did a great job bridging the gap between undergraduates and the professors.</p>
<p>It’s all very nice, but if you are going to claim that Yale is “more undergrad focused than other universities” then don’t you think you should at least have something based on reality for saying so? </p>
<p>OK, you’ve never attended two schools so you can’t really compare - fair enough, but then that also means you can’t make the kinds of claims you are making. How about some truth in advertising?</p>
<p>I’m a Yale student and I don’t find this a problem. For example, one of my History Teachers is an amazing tenured professor but my TA has taught me far more than he ever could, something that goes along with having large, intro classes.</p>
<p>If you’re being taught well and you feel as if you’re developing intellectually, I don’t see why it matters who’s actually doing the teaching. </p>
<p>I don’t see a problem with Yale’s undergrad focus and I do think its hard to understand unless you actually attend the school.</p>
<p>How the OP gets from the article’s statement that, “in any given semester, a handful of [Yale professors], for a variety of reasons, do not [teach undergrad courses]” to his own position that “this ‘undergraduate focus’ thing is itself a fraud” is a mystery to me.</p>
<p>Less mysterious is his/her allegiance. S/he has made numerous posts that criticize Princeton, MIT, and Yale, and that praise Harvard. My guess is that s/he is either a current Harvard student or an alum.</p>
<p>Ah, thanks for clearing that up. There used to be a CC poster called Byerly who loved to trumpet Harvard (which is fine) and put down other schools (which is not). Perhaps ske293 is a Byerly acolyte.</p>
<p>Honestly, I think the real myth is a lack of attention to undergraduates at Harvard. </p>
<p>I don’t think you could prove in any meaningful way that Yale is any better than Princeton, certainly, in terms of faculty-undergraduate relations. As for either of them vs. Harvard, I knew a lot of people at Harvard when I was at Yale (four high school friends, three cousins whom I knew well, a girl whom I dated for a summer), and I visited there at least a couple of times a year. None of the people I knew there had close relationships with any of their teachers of the sort that were pretty common at Yale, and none of them cared terribly much about that. They certainly weren’t complaining about the quality of the teaching. And their attitude was something like “Why would you want to waste time brown-nosing faculty when you could be doing great things in the world with your amazing classmates?”</p>
<p>So – any information I have is terribly outdated, but I didn’t feel like I lacked enough information to make a judgment that, yes, Yale’s faculty was somewhat more engaged with undergraduates than Harvard’s, and, no, it didn’t matter all that much. Things could certainly have changed in the ensuing decades, but that was the tradition at the two schools.</p>