Nobody is saying that PhD programs are exactly equivalent to undergrad programs. However, the question is whether some of the same funding principles might apply. I believe that they might. For example, perhaps those undergrads who receive top marks for a particular course could be offered the opportunity to become paid TA’s for that same course in subsequent semesters. Heck, the undergrad who receives top marks in a particular course may arguably know the material better than the PhD student serving as the TA for that course {for the simple reason that at least the undergrad actually excelled in the course in question whereas many PhD students serving as course TA’s may not have actually received top marks in that particular course in question, or in some cases, never even took the course at all.} The same logic would apply for RA-ships: certain top undergrads have arguably developed better research skills than some PhD students. Why can’t those undergrads be offered paid RA-ships? And then there are plenty of PhD students on full fellowship, sometimes as part of a department-wide dictate. For example, some economics department (e.g. Harvard) commit to providing multi-year fellowships to all of its PhD students. Truth be told, certain Harvard economics undergrads are arguably more qualified than some of the Harvard PhD econ students, so why shouldn’t those undergrads also receive a fellowship? {Heck, I can think of certain Harvard econ undergrads who already have more publications than some Harvard PhD economics students.}
The upshot is that if society can offer free (or actually negative cost) education to PhD students, it doesn’t seem outrageous to think that it could do the same for at least certain undergraduates.
Undergraduate TAs do exist, but they are not paid a full tuition like PhD’s are. Most of the time they are just there to lessen the workload for the graduate TA.
The idea that undergraduates would know the material better because they got an A than a PhD student is simply not true. Usually PhD students will TA in either a basic field (which they have had many years of experience in and have solidly internalized) or in something related to their research (which they will obviously know a lot about). Getting an A in a class just means you gathered enough points to reach the grade cutoff; it doesn’t mean you have some massive depth of knowledge of the material. PhD students, who have taken many subsequent classes, have had the chance to learn the material in more depth and internalize it to a degree that students who just took the class have not had.
As far as I’ve seen, the harder the class, the less likely that some undergrad that took it would be qualified to TA it. Intro to X, maybe, but Advanced Theoretical Y … not so much.
I have seen some undergrads that have work that puts them somewhere into the Masters to PhD range in terms of productive output. But to put it lightly, they are rare. And they almost always have full merit scholarships if they didn’t choose to go to an expensive school instead.
The difference is that PhD’s aren’t getting “free education” by any stretch of the imagination. They’re getting paid a small stipend for being a research assistant. Undergrads are taking classes and gaining experience.
This is accurate. Universities actually make money off of TAs and graduate assistants. What they pay TAs $15k a year to do they’d have to pay an assistant professor at least $60k. TAs are cheap labor that ensures the department/university can pocket more curricular dollars. To put it simply, colleges net more money by having graduate students take on more duties.
Frankly, I’m not in favor of graduate students teaching and grading undergrads, but anyone who thinks that an A in an undergraduate class makes one just as qualified–if not moreso–than a PhD student is probably unfamiliar with the rigorous coursework, research, and publishing that PhDs must undertake in order to get their degree.
Sure, but the question then is: Why not? What’s wrong with that? Is that bad?
That is certainly the ideal. But the sad reality is that sometimes PhD students are assigned to TA classes for which they have relatively little knowledge but for which no other PhD student is available to be a TA.
To give you an example, consider undergraduate business courses, particularly regarding a highly applied topic such as ‘Managerial Communication’. A (possibly shocking) fact of business academia is that most business PhD students do not actually hold degrees in business (either undergrad or MBA), and many have no actual professional business background, and certainly many of them have neither taken a formal course nor have any professional training in management communication. {Why business academia persistently admits PhD students with no business background is a truly fascinating question in its own right that is another topic for another time.} Yet the fact is, somebody has to serve as the TA for the Management Communication course, and that often times means a PhD student who doesn’t him/herself actually know the topic well. I would argue that an undergrad who actually excelled in this course would be much better than many current business PhD students would be.
Sure, I would agree that if there were a surfeit of business PhD students who are master communicators, by all means have them be the TA’s for the Managerial Communication class. But the fact is, there aren’t. The reality is that very few if any business PhD students actually specialize in communication. Given the choice between a business PhD student who has no prior training in managerial communication and for which he/she is not particularly talented vs. an undergrad who actually took the course and excelled, it’s hard to see why the former would always be preferred. What’s wrong with considering the undergrad?
Another prominent example might be undergraduate accounting. The fact is, there really aren’t that many accounting PhD students - accounting being the academic field where the demand for faculty most outstrips supply - and many accounting PhD students (shockingly) do not actually have a background in accounting per se (for they’re actually glorified economists). Yet the fact remains that somebody has to be the TA for the undergrad accounting courses. So often times you end up with one of those accounting PhD students who doesn’t actually have any true accounting background, or a business PhD student from an entirely different subdiscipline. Again, I’m not entirely sure that that’s always preferable to simply having an undergrad who excelled at that course.
Or they just go to a school that simply doesn’t provide any merit scholarships to undergrads as a matter of rule (e.g. the Ivies). For example, those Harvard econ undergrads that I mentioned who had already published more than some Harvard econ PhD students were not being provided any merit scholarships because Harvard as a matter of rule doesn’t provide merit scholarships to undergrads. But again, the question is: Why not? All Harvard PhD students are essentially being provided ‘merit scholarships’.
Look, obviously nobody is contending that PhD programs are literally free. Just like the Boston Globe article that sparked this entire thread is not discussing policy that would make undergraduate education literally free. What we are talking about is whether the program can be free to the student. If PhD programs can be free to the student, then I’m not sure why it’s so outrageous that undergraduate programs can also sometime be free to the student.
You say that undergrads are taking classes and gaining experience. So are PhD students. Indeed, in certain instances (e.g. Managerial Communication), some undergrads arguably have better experience than some PhD students. So why should those PhD students nevertheless be provided with an education that is free to them, but not those undergrads in question?
Indeed so, and by that same logic, universities could make even more money by having their top undergrads take some of the teaching load which would allow them to hire even fewer faculty.
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Trust me, I am intimately familiar with what a PhD program entails. Indeed, it is precisely the contents of a PhD program that should have all of us look askance at whether they are in fact qualified to be TA’s at all. The fact is, PhD student’s are strongly encouraged - indeed often times required - to devote all of their energies to a tiny subfield with which they can publish and establish a research reputation. Quite frankly, that is not conducive in the least towards excellent teaching in undergraduate coursework. {Indeed, the sociology of academia is such that TA-work is generally viewed as unproductive scutwork that drains time better spent on research and publishing - but that’s another topic entirely.}
To be sure, I’m not saying that all undergrads who excel in a course would always be better TA’s than all PhD students. I am simply saying that those undergrads should be considered for the role. Let’s be perfectly honest: Not all PhD students are good TA’s.
One of my kids was an undergraduate TA as a junior and senior for a beginning engineering exploration type class that involved C++. He graded assignments and had office hours for kids that wanted extra help but it was the professor, of course, who actually taught the class. He got about $10 an hour.
My background and experience is in STEM, where such a scenario is patently absurd. If the school is acting in good faith (which a sizeable minority is not) then the graduate students will at least have a core understanding of the topic at the undergraduate level, or else they would not be admitted. Business academia (excluding actual academic fields like economics) is a different story altogether, and I’m not sure “academia” is the right word - more like “formal education that happens to take place in a university.” I’ll refrain from commenting too much on relative preparedness of graduate vs undergraduate students because it’s definitely different.
Because it’s a private school and private schools do what they want. Don’t like it, there are plenty of public options that will give you merit scholarships. If they required a $50k per year tuition paid in advance of the school year for each attendee, they would still all fill up their classes. They are private and they hold the winning cards here.
Because PhD students generally take a very minor course load and most of their work is their research. Undergrads are the reverse.
No, they aren’t. But that doesn’t mean that most undergrads are better at it. Very few people have both depth of knowledge and an effective teaching style without some education and experience that helps them to develop it.
If you read this thread then you will find that I’m definitely in favor of free undergraduate education. I just don’t think your suggestion is the way to do it.
@peterquill your argument is contradictory. You concede that PhD students sometimes aren’t the best teachers (I’ll sign off on that) so therefore, in your world, even less qualified undergrads should take on teaching duties.
What you also fail to realize is that universities already exist that offer a “free” ride to everyone; students work for their education by providing upkeep around the campus. Why not look to that model?
But the answer isn’t to put more unqualified teachers–who don’t even have a bachelor’s degree–in charge of other students’ educations. That’s some theater of the absurd. Undergrads are entitled to have qualified professionals with degrees teaching them. The most disgraceful thing about higher ed is that this isn’t the case anymore. I graduated from OSU (or, as I like to call it, TA-istan) where nearly half of all undergraduates course hours are taught by TAs, adjuncts, and other low-paid lecturers. And it showed, because the teaching oftentimes wasn’t good. The most shameful thing about higher education is that students are paying higher tuition than ever before for some of the lowest-paid instructional staff in history.
The answer isn’t to eliminate even more PhD-holding faculty in favor of conscripting undergrads; it’s to cut back on administrative bloat, among other things. I mean, why would you even go to college to be taught by someone who hasn’t yet finished the very degree that you’re there seeking? Might as well stay in high school.
It is not just large public schools that sometimes use undergraduate TA’s to support faculty . Privates like MIT, Duke , and CMU all use undergraduate TA’s for some lower level courses. (Just as examples found ).
I misunderstood your initial post. I thought you were talking about graduate student TAs, not undergrad TAs.
I’ve most commonly seen undergrad TAs working in very low-level capacities, like grading assignments (when assignments don’t require a lot of interpretive work) or as “help assistants” in labs or dance classes. I think that’s okay.
I don’t think an undergrad should ever be the instructor-of-record for a class, and probably not a recitation leader either.
I can’t imagine an undergraduate TA ever being the “instructor-of-record.” It is a support role for the professor, at least that was the case with my son in engineering.
Well, first off, it seems as if you are saying that many schools are indeed not acting on good faith and therefore some PhD students who are assigned as TA’s are indeed not experts on the subject matter in question. In such instances, it seems to me that having former undergrads serve as TA’s would indeed be a viable option. {Now, if you want to say that it is absurd that schools are not always acting on good faith, you are perfectly free to do so. All I can tell you are the realities of higher education, and if those realities are absurd, then so be it.}
On the other hand, I wouldn’t even need to accuse schools of not always acting in good faith. I would simply point to the fact that PhD students in any department are a finite resource with differing skillsets and interests and therefore you’re not always guaranteed to optimally fill all of the TA positions with highly qualified PhD students for every single undergrad course offered every semester.
Since you say that you were taking about STEM, then to take a STEM example that I’ve been wrestling with recently, consider a course on Model Theory (which is essentially the merging of Universal Algebra with Logic). The truth is, most math PhD students have never actually taken a formal course on Model Theory, for it is not a required course in most undergrad math programs, nor is it required in in the math PhD qualifying exams at most schools. {Indeed, I’m not aware of Model Theory being a qualifying exam requirement at any school’s math PhD program.) Even the few PhD students who may have taken a formal Model Theory course may not all have necessarily excelled in the course. Nor is it a highly popular area of research that attracts a great many PhD students. The upshot is that most math departments have only a handful of PhD students who are actually highly competent in Model Theory. Indeed, there may be years when a math department doesn’t have any competent Model Theory PhD students, as perhaps the program has already graduated the ones that they had and the program has yet to replace them by matriculating new PhD students who know the topic. Even the few competent Model Theory PhD students the department does have might not be interested in or simply not available to be the TA during the scheduled course time when the Model Theory course is offered.
For example, a department might have, say, 4 competent Model Theory PhD students at any given time. But one is in his ‘job market year’ and therefore is understandably uninterested in any TA assignments. Another is taking coursework at the same time as the Model Theory course is scheduled and is therefore unavailable. Another has already completed all of his departmental TA requirements and doesn’t like it and is therefore not interested in more. Another is on fellowship and therefore doesn’t have any TA requirements. Hence, none of the four are actually available to you.
Yet the fact is, somebody has to be the Model Theory TA. Hence, you inevitably end up taking a PhD student who isn’t actually an expert on that topic. In that situation, why not consider the undergrads who have actually excelled at that course? At least you can be confident that they know the material.
The upshot is that we should be careful not to romanticize the realities of the PhD lifestyle. PhD students are not ‘Supermen/women’ who are experts in every single course taught by the department. Indeed, any honest PhD student will readily admit that there are plenty of topics in their field that they don’t know well. Nevertheless all of the TA positions still have to be filled, and if you insist on using only PhD students to fill them, then some of those positions will inevitably be filled by PhD students who are not experts in the topic at hand.
Why must this discussion be necessarily restricted to public schools? It seems to me that private schools would also benefit from such a reform, because they are more expensive than public schools (for in-state students). Hence, the opportunity to reduce undergrad student costs by offering TA positions to some of them would seem to be more attractive to private school undergrads than to public school students.
I’m afraid that I don’t see what that has to do with it. So what if undergrads are spending most of their time on coursework? If an undergrad can find enough time in the day to be a TA, why shouldn’t he/she obtain the full benefits of being a TA, including stipend and free tuition?
After all, right now, plenty of undergrads today take part-time jobs to pay for their education. Indeed, many undergrad financial aid packages consist partly of work-study, which is essentially a job. If undergrads can find enough time in the day to do that, is it really so outrageous that they might also be able to find enough time to be a TA? And if they can, then why shouldn’t they obtain the full benefits of being a TA?
See above. As I said before, PhD students are not Supermen/women who both have deep knowledge regarding every single subject taught by the department and are also effective teachers. {Indeed, the second point is perhaps the most obvious of all: Anybody who’s been around academia will quickly discover that many PhD students are not exactly the best teachers.} Inevitably, some TA’s are assigned who are not experts in the subject matter in question, are not effective teachers, or both. That’s the unfortunate reality of modern-day academia, and we shouldn’t sugar-coat that.
Given that reality, I continue to ask the question: Why shouldn’t undergrads who excelled in a particular course be considered as potential future TA’s for that course? Like I said, at least they clearly know the material well. The same cannot always be said for the current TA system.
{Granted, maybe those undergrads would not be great teachers. But like I said, right now, plenty of PhD students aren’t great teachers either. So it’s a wash.}
Given that certain undergrads may actually be better than certain PhD students, at least regarding a particular course, I continue to ask why wouldn’t this suggestion work?
Why would they be less qualified? To reiterate, I never said that such TA positions would be offered to any undergrad. Rather, they would be offered to those undergrads who excelled in a particular course, and the offer would to be a future TA for that course.
To use my example above, the undergrad who receives an A in Model Theory might very well be more competent in Model Theory than the PhD student who is actually assigned to be the Model Theory TA, because, like I said, that PhD student might have never even taken a Model Theory course at all (as Model Theory is not required for most math programs). Yet the fact is, somebody still has to be the Model Theory TA. Why should schools artificially restrict themselves to only filling those roles with only PhD students who may not even know the material, when they have some perfectly competent undergrads available who do know the material?
Well, I think those undergrads who have excelled in their coursework can do a little better than some campus upkeep job that anybody can do. To repeat my example, if you get an A in Model Theory, you clearly have knowledge that most people don’t have. So why should you have to resort to only some campus upkeep job that doesn’t use your unique knowledge? Why can’t you be the Model Theory TA in future semesters?
The key word there is qualified. Like I said, as matters stand right now, some TA’s have never even taken the course for which they are TA’s. Even those that did may not have excelled at it. Again, PhD students are not Supermen/women who are experts in every course taught by their department. I would argue that an undergrad who received an A in a particular course is actually more qualified than a PhD student who never even took the course at all.
I would actually argue that it what is truly absurd is to have PhD students who have never taken the course at all being the TA for that course: yet that sometimes happens. Like I said, somebody has to be the TA, and nowadays that sometimes means a PhD student who is not an expert in the subject.
Hey, at least he took the course and got an A in it. It’s not clear to me that that guy is automatically worse than somebody who has never taken the course at all, even if he holds a degree.
But at least we can reduce some of the tuition for certain undergrads by letting them be TA’s. If a school is going to rely heavily upon TA’s anyway, why not allow some undergrads to partake and thereby reduce their tuition?
Granted, you may argue that schools should stop relying upon TA’s so much in the first place, and that’s fair enough. But if that’s not going to happen (and frankly, I think it won’t), then it seems to me that we might as well leverage the current system by allowing certain undergrads the opportunity to reduce their their tuition through being TA’s. What’s wrong with that?
Actually why not? Like I’ve been saying throughout, right now, PhD students are sometimes assigned to teach courses that they don’t really know. Why not instead have undergrads who excelled at a particular course be the recitation leader - or heck, in extreme cases, maybe even the instructor of record?
Ideally, you may argue that every courses should always be taught by people who are truly experts in those courses. But right now, we are far from that ideal and we’re probably not going to reach that ideal anytime soon.
My son never set out to be an undergraduate TA. He was approached by his department about being a TA for a class he had gotten probably an A+ in (he had over 3.9 his first two years and had mostly A’s and A +'s so I’m guessing he had a very good grade in that particular class). It was for a beginning engineering course (problem solving or engineering exploration with C++ or something like that). He was paid though an hourly wage , no stipend and was restricted by number of hours (10 or 12 I believe) . It helped him with pocket money as we were full pay instate and he was not eligible for work study or anything like that. He must have done an okay job since he was asked back to do it for additional semesters. It is interesting to see how some people think it is absurd that a school would have undergraduate TA’s. But many schools actually do, both public and private.
It is important to bear in mind that if the process of getting a college degree is stripped down to just what is necessary for that AND NOTHING ELSE, it is not intrinsically very expensive. This is because THAT OBJECTIVE can be accomplished online with proctored exams (which can conceivably one day be proctored with technology).
This discussion about TAing during the undergrad as a way to finance UG education is totally irrelevant to this discussion. The students who may qualify to TA are the better students of the bunch. Current convoluted system can provide free or affordable UG education to roughly top 25% of the students (even if they had financial constrains they could made financially sound college choices). The problem is what to do with the rest 75%, especially if they are not rich and live far away from the educational opportunities.
Agree-Being an undergraduate TA is not going to finance your undergraduate degree. UG kids still need to take a regular course load to complete their degrees. And usually work limited hours as a TA for minimal pay. Different scenario than what graduate TA’s are doing/expected to do.
Lol, this discussion is indeed irrelevant and nothing but a distraction from the issues at hand. Like, okay, your kid is a TA at his university. But there aren’t enough TA positions to go around for super qualified students BECAUSE UNIVERSITIES EXIST FOR THE PURPOSE OF EDUCATING PEOPLE WHO LACK A DEGREE AND ARE THERE TO LEARN. It’s ridiculous to even put forward this model where people go to universities to teach rather than receive an education. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the university, and I’m beginning to think that the guy who started this portion of the discussion is just doing this to be contrary or something.
And besides, we already have “free” universities where undergrads work in various capacities in order to defray their costs. Why not look to that model?
I don’t know why a high school diploma and an A in low-level econ would suddenly now transform someone into a teacher. It’s a bit insulting to teachers/professors, who go to school for years to learn instructional techniques. The arguments being put forward here are just more of the same anti-intellectual spiel that we’re already familiar with. Professors don’t do anything valuable for students, check. A degree is nothing more than a piece of paper, check. It doesn’t matter who teaches because no one at university really learns anything anyway, check. None of that is true.
Another thing I think is funny: The fact that this discussion seems to ignore the realities of classroom dynamics (I’m assuming because most people in this thread haven’t been in one for a while). Undergrads generally don’t respect their grad TAs, who already have at least one degree. I don’t know why everyone thinks that sticking them in a room with a junior or a senior would be even better. That would be almost riveting to watch–for everyone except the TA and the students.