Your Kid's Experience of TA's

<p>S had a TA as an assistant to the professor for all his classes, even though most classes were 15 to 18 students, except for physics which was about 40, but with smaller labs and discussion groups led by a TA. (The physics & calc profs held small study sessions at their offices to help students, as well.) In addition, there were also optional tutorials in physics provided by a separate group of TA's. He liked it all, and found the TA's to be very helpful in all his classes.</p>

<p>The TA in my son's quantum physics class is "brilliant" according to my son, and does a much better job of explaining than the professor. (In fact, the professor apologized to the class after the first midterm, saying he'd only give himself a C for how well he had taught the first half of the course!). So, this reveals a less-mentioned advantage of courses with TAs: a second way of explaining material can often help. The TA also may have a much more accurate idea of what level the students are on than the prof, since the TA was in their shoes much more recently.</p>

<p>My son has also had grad students teach his core classes, which are small. These are a little beyond what you think of as a TA, in that they are basically fifth or sixth year grad students who are trained in teaching the course, follow a common reading list, and attend weekly lectures themselves on the core material. (One last year was actually a post-doc). One of these teachers was absolutely outstanding -- met frequently and individually with the students, took a lot of time to write comments on papers, did an excellent job of leading class discussion (a skill not all professors have), and really prodded the kids to dig deep. She constantly checked with the class to make sure it was living up to the experience they expected. The others were various degrees of ok. </p>

<p>The vast majority of his classes have been taught by professors and I'd say his two favorites were his largest -- introductory lecture classes in economics, with talented lecturers who could also encourage and react to questions even in a class with several hundred students.</p>

<p>D's experience with TA's at Columbia has been that usually they are helpful, available and talented at breaking down the information thrown out during lectures. From what I have gathered during our conversations, one or two of her TA's were more gifted than the professor at presenting the material in a particular class. She has mentioned that there are a small number of undergrads invited to TA in some of the science labs. </p>

<p>Thus far she has had a very good experience with most of her professors and TA's. There have been one or two classes where she did not receive the grade that she would have hoped for but she never felt it was because of the quality of instruction.</p>

<p>Sac-we must be on the same schedule. We often post about Columbia within minutes of one another. :)</p>

<p>Elleneast -- I love seeing you on here, because your description of your daughter's first year played a part in my kid's choosing Columbia, and your continued posts reassure me that his experience is likely to be great even as the newness wears off! :)</p>

<p>My son has one lousy prof this semester, in a statistics class that's taught in an engineering department. Luckily, the guy chose an excellent textbook. The online student reviews are a big benefit in choosing classes, and I'm always impressed by how many enthusiastic reviews there are. (There are also reviews of TAs, so students can shop for a good section, schedule permitting)</p>

<p>With all the praise for the quality of low-cost TAs, it sounds to me like universities should change their marketing and start bragging about how many TAs they use to prospective students instead of denying that they exist.</p>

<p>Since I have not visited colleges where the existence of TAS was denied, I can't comment on ID's post. However, I know that graduate students who have not had much experience as TAs are at a disadvantage on the job market. At the same time, at LACs where enrolments can reach 50, not having a TA can be a real disadvantage for both profs and students. And when I say I know, I mean it.</p>

<p>EDIT: I responded to another thread about students being shut out of certain classes. That happened to S1 at his LAC; I do not expect it to happen to my S at his research university thanks to the presence of TAs.</p>

<p>I'm in favor of TA's when they do as their name implies: assist. It's when they function in loco professor that I think the kids are not getting what their parents paid for. :)</p>

<p>For my first two years at UMich I never saw a professor outside of the lecture hall (admittedly partly my fault as well). I remember that many of my TA's were terrific -- enthusiastic, caring, good communicators -- but I don't think I could compare the quality of education that I received from the TA's to the intensity of focus and depth of understanding that my son is getting from his professors at his LAC.</p>

<p>Also, I think a key point is that a brilliant scientist, writer, artist, mathematician is not necessarily an excellent or even a good teacher. Skills that lead to personal success in creative or scientific fields are not nececessarily the same skills that make a good mentor or enlightener. For that reason, I'm leary of the big name instructors (and my son's LAC has their share of superstars too) and prefer the professors who are there because they want to teach.</p>

<p>As Marite points out this is where tenure can interfer. Every college has a "much loved" professor who didn't make the tenure cut because s/he didn't produce. Tenure is definitely a double edged sword both for the individual instructor and for the students.</p>

<p>marite:</p>

<p>I would say that there is still a fair amount of "choosing" by professors. It depends on the fields, but I would say that the vast, vast majority of the faculty at the two LACs I've taught at had <em>chosen</em> to be there, largely because they wanted a school that emphasized teaching and smaller classes.</p>

<p>That research universities nowadays emphasize teaching more is, in my opinion, little more than a myth, or what these schools want you to believe. I would say that these schools have learned to pay a lot more lip service to teaching than they used to, realizing that parents and students get upset otherwise; but, in practice, the system is still designed to reward research, not teaching.</p>

<p>And it's certainly true that LACs want evidence of research. Whether you teach at a LAC or at a research university, you're going to have to do teaching, research, and service. But that doesn't change the fact that the relative weights remain different. Research has a lot more weight than teaching at research u's, whereas teaching is more important at LACs (more important than it is at research u's; you do still need to do research). Again, the bottom line is that LACs naturally attract faculty more interested in (and better at) teaching, whereas research u's do the same for more research-oriented people.</p>

<p>Collegeprof:</p>

<p>I stand by what I have said. My experience covers 25 years. </p>

<p>I wish that graduate students going on the job market had the choice you say they have. They don't. It's a buyer''s market, made worse by the decision of many universities to hire adjuncts.</p>

<p>I've always believed that when it comes to TAs they're like professors: there are both good and bad ones. I had one TA for a lab whose English you couldn't understand and whose writing was undecipherable; I've had one for lab who was just the most awesome guy you'd ever hope to have as a TA in lab. Same goes for professors: I had one where I showed up early and sat in the front row and another where I never learned one thing during that prof's lectures during the whole term.
Now granted no I do not want a TA teaching me in upper-level courses but I find nothing wrong with them playing a significant role in intro-level courses. Often professors are unwilling to teach it so the good ones never get assigned that material anyway, whereas TAs are more often happy to be there. Just what I've noticed.</p>

<p>To me, the issue that gives LACs in general an advantage over research universities in general is not teaching but mentoring. The mentoring is still possible at a research university, but it is not automatic. Students need to seek it out. </p>

<p>No one would argue that research universities don't give tenure mostly on the basis of research. Still, I think there are some teaching advantages at research universities: because of TAs, there is not usually a problem getting into a class; because there is usually more than one prof teaching a particular class, a student can choose the better teacher, or even wait until someone else is teaching it; again, because of a larger faculty, students have more choice of their "type" of teacher. (One thing that becomes obvious on student review sites is that the same professor can be "awesome" for one student and "worthless" for a different student.)</p>