<p>About 25 years ago, I took a Intro to Psychology class from a PhD student in Psychology. I think her title was TA, meaning teaching assistant. I also took music classes (smaller ones for non-majors) from PhD Music students. In all these cases, I felt I had great instructors and didn’t feel cheated one bit.</p>
<p>All my discussions and lab classes were taught by TAs and they were hit and miss, like professors really. They all got the job done and if you had questions, you could always go to the professor’s office hours. I did my undergraduate work at Cal -Berkeley.</p>
<p>Now, my husband is a graduate student in math (went back to school to become a prof) and he started with the Cal State (as opposed to University of CA) system working on his master’s degree as his previous bachelor’s and master’s were in engineering. He is currently teaching 2 sections of a basic algebra class for non-technical majors. He just started this semester. He holds office hours and has an assigned desk. He is called a TA, but TA means teaching associate, and if he was teaching one more section/class, he would be considered a full time employee and qualify for benefits, so it seems to be more than what I used to call a TA-teaching assistant position.</p>