Are schools with teacher assistants bad?

[ucbalumnus]

@tk21769

Now, that’s Michigan (one of the best state universities in America, with a 12:1 student:faculty ratio). Imagine what you’ll get at an average large, public university in a state that doesn’t invest as heavily in education (and where the TAs may not be as good as the average grad student at Michigan).

Public universities with fewer graduate students may not use many TAs because of lack of supply.

Of course, at these schools, and LACs, a significant number of the faculty may be adjuncts.

@tk21769

IMO the OP is asking an important question (“how can you find out the percentage of classes taught by TAs at a college?”) Instead of only rehashing the broader debate (or trying to persuade us the question isn’t important) I wish we could identify good tools to answer it.

There are no quick stats that people can cite – and, even if there were, the stats could vary wildly by department (e.g. English and foreign languages commonly use TA as lead instructors in frosh-level courses, but that is much less common in other subjects, where TAs are usually secondary instructors in discussion or lab sections), so that overall school stats can mislead (just like proxy measures of class size). Someone looking for the answer to this question, for a specific school and potential major subject, needs to dig around the school’s class schedule to figure out the class formats, and match up instructor names to rosters of faculty and graduate students in that department.