What you’ve described here isn’t really a TA in terms of the common definition of TA. I mean, I worked in the writing center as an undergrad, helping people with their paper-writing skills. I got recruited because I also had tip-top grades. That didn’t make me a TA. When we’re talking about TAs, we’re talking about people who receive a stipend to teach low-level classes as instructors-of-record or who lead recitation sections and grade papers/exams for large lectures while also holding office hours. Your son might have been called a TA by his university, but the type of job he did isn’t what we’re talking about here.
It really sort of sounds like you sought to find the most obscure example that you could. And it still is an absurd one.
First of all, yes, I know plenty of schools which have a model theory qual. Not strictly required, but seldom are you required to take a qualifying exam in every single field of study of mathematics - that would be quite ridiculous. Just one on basics, and some on advanced material.
Even more absurd is thinking that undergrads can somehow be qualified where graduate students are not. A model theory class implies a model theory professor doing research. And that implies one of two things: either the topic is so obscure that few people will take the class (so the prof can handle the workload by himself easily) or the class is big enough that graduate students will be aiding with that research. Either way, TAs are available if necessary.
And I see no likelihood to the scenario that there are undergrads who have taken and aced the class, and no graduate students that have done the same. Either way, the undergrad would be woefully unprepared to TA the course, given how much more in-depth your knowledge of the topic needs to be to be able to evaluate and grade proofs, than to get an A or A+ in a class with proofs. Guess which of the two - undergraduate or graduate - is the only one likely to have anything resembling that kind of in-depth knowledge? In fact, it can often be only the professor who is capable of that.
This really is a distraction-but - many schools do have udergraduate TA’s, whether or not you think it is absurd. And they are paid hourly or given credit, not by stipend. Duke, MIT, Cornell, etc. use undergraduate TA’s. Just google it. My son was at a public school. He did have office hours, graded assignments, etc. He was certainly not the instructor or record and I doubt any undergraduate TA at any university would be considered an instructor of record. But please post if you have an example of that. Graduate TA’s are a different story, and would receive a stipend and be expected to work more hours, with more responsibility. If you think MIT, Duke, Cornell, and other schools of that caliber are absurd to have undergraduate TA’s, maybe you should take it up with them.
The absurdity is thinking that undergraduate TAs have a body of knowledge that exceeds that of PhD students just because they got an A in the class one semester ago. As far as I’ve seen undergraduate TAs are mostly employed in lessening the workload in large lecture classes on low-level material, where their base of knowledge is sufficient to properly grade assignments (with the help of an answer key).
i agree with that-that in general, an undergraduate TA would be helpful to the professor in a large class. That is what I have been saying. That does not mean that it is absurd that undergraduate TA’s exist at all.
Amen to this. Even teaching an introductory class requires so much more expertise than acing that class a few semesters before.
By saying that undergrads could teach introductory classes, we’re saying that all one needs to teach a class is to have paid attention enough in that class and taken really good notes. As someone who’s taught before, I can say that that’s categorically untrue. Acing Intro to U.S. History, and leaving the class with a good set of notes, did not qualify me to turn around and teach my peers a year or two later. A lot doesn’t get covered in a survey class, so acing one doesn’t mean that you know a subject well enough to teach it.
My professor in intro to US history had written a few books on the subject. The TA who taught my recitation section and graded my papers, though not the best teacher in the world, had written a thesis and taken advanced graduate seminars. Their knowledge definitely dwarfed mine, even after the survey class was over.
I think that some people think that college-level teaching unfolds along a “banking model” where the professor just comes into the room and reads off some slides and hands you an outline. No, that’s not how it goes. Or not how it’s supposed to go, anyway. Teaching is an art and a learned skill, not an information dump.
That was my point. “TA” to most people means a graduate student who can serve as the instructor of record. Your son was not the instructor of record. Therefore, he wasn’t the “TA” in the sense that we have defined it for this discussion.
Please provide an example of a class you know of at a university where an undergraduate TA was the instructor of record in a class and was doing any of the primary teaching, as opposed to the professor (or possibly graduate TA). I have never said that an undergraduate TA would be or should be an “instructor of record.”
He wasn’t the “TA” in the sense that YOU have defined it for this discussion. Undergraduate TA’s do exist at many schools, whether you like it or not. As I said , maybe you should take it up with MIT, Duke, and Cornell if you don’t like the term Undergraduate TA.
Not to me. The “A” in “TA” means assistant, as in “assisting” a real professor or adjunct. Personally, I never had a TA as the Instructor of Record and neither did my kids at their colleges. (But that doesn’t mean that they don’t exist in some colleges, but I would be surprised if that was the norm.)
Marcus; does tOSU have a bunch of classes taught by TA’s as the instructor of record, i.e., no real faulty person?
What? I never said I had such an example. It’s what peterquill has been proposing. I think you’ve been reading something into this discussion that is not there.
Well, I’ve had experience at four different universities, and at every single one a TA was, among other things, a graduate student who taught, designed, and graded entire classes.
But these arguments of definition don’t really matter, because that’s not the point of this discussion! The anecdotes about what your kid does or what “TA” means is immaterial. We’re discussing whether undergrads have the skills and experience to teach classes. They don’t.
No, we’re discussing whether “Making College Free Will Only Make It Worse.”
Lol, uh yeah? But we’re also discussing peterquill’s proposal as part of that? Which is why your anecdotes about your son are distracting here.
As are your anecdotes. Seems time for the discussion to move on.
I … didn’t derail the discussion with my irrelevant anecdotes. But fair enough. This is a bizarre hall of mirrors in here.
Um, isn’t that the only type of expertise that many PhD students have now? Let’s face it, a lot of PhD students aren’t true experts in their subject matter either; they haven’t truly undertaken any serious research yet, they may not have even taken the course of which they are assigned to TA. All that many of them have, frankly, are top grades in some other, possibly related, undergrad coursework. Yet it doesn’t seem as if you’re objecting to those guys being TA’s, so why would it be significantly different for an undergrad who did well in a particular course to be a TA for that course.
Then by all means, please tell that to the universities that right now do sometimes assign PhD students to be TA’s in which they are not experts, which unfortunately, is not uncommon. Like I said before, there are indeed Managerial Communications courses that are TA’d by PhD students who, let’s just say, aren’t exactly experts in managerial communication (or, indeed, have no managerial background whatsoever). The same holds for other courses as well.
I’m glad that you had a US History TA who was actually an expert in the topics. Nevertheless, that doesn’t take away from the fact that not all classes are always TA’d by people who are experts in that topic. Repeatedly claiming otherwise will not make it true.
Teaching may well be an art, but it is an art that is unlearned by many PhD students who are nevertheless assigned to be TA’s anyway. That is, of couse, you want to claim that all PhD students are expert teachers. Yet I believe that you yourself had agreed that your history TA was not a great teacher.
Given that not all PhD students are great teachers - which I doubt that anybody would dispute - I’m not sure why we should categorically dismiss the notion that some undergrads might actually be better teachers than some PhD students. Is that completely outside the realm of possibility?
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
Yes, it is time for the discussion to move on. Aside from being wildly off-topic, the conversation is now going around in circles. There have been threads here in the past about undergraduate TA’s, and if, in the highly unlikely event that the particular aspect of undergraduate TA’s has not been covered, this really needs to addressed in a new discussion. Future posts here on the topic will be deleted.
Why free college tuition makes sense (for public universities):
- It has worked in the past (e.g., California). What happened? What is the largest contributing factor to major increases in public universities? The withdrawal of state funds by legislatures to fill the gap created by continued tax reductions.
- The United States is not the most educated country in the world (it is only number 5). That distinction belongs to Russia.
- College education is actually GOOD for the tax roles. It is estimated that college educated people pay approximately$200,000 more in taxes over the course of their lives than do non-college-educated people.
While noting that I do generally support a socialized education model, I want to highlight a few general issues that obviously come up that need to be addressed (which I have tried to do in my many posts in this thread).
I might wonder if California is the best example given its not-so-distant severe budget issues. The problem is that when budget cuts happen, schools will get cut. Also people are in the US are often ridiculously adamant about NO NEW TAXES, even when paying a bit more in taxes would save them more money overall.
The benefit of college is only felt if there is a job waiting for you at the end of it that utilizes those skills. Otherwise it just serves as a wall that inflates requirements into insanity (see [my previous post](Making college ‘free’ will only make it worse - #306 by NeoDymium - Parents Forum - College Confidential Forums) about Germany and requirement creep). Same goes for tax benefits.
The Soviet Union guaranteed employment in your field upon graduation (a system with its own problems; I can describe them if anyone is curious). The US has no such system and you’re basically on your own and you have to find a job yourself. Universities have little incentive beyond their own reputation to make sure all their students are employed; often they can just take tuition money, hand out degrees or flunk you, and make out like bandits (not a charitable description but very possible under the current model).
In fact, I do have some suspicions that perhaps relaxed education requirements and lower numbers of educated people are actually a good thing for the country as a whole. For one, it’s really great for high-educated immigrants if their degree is valid and they have less competition. The same benefit is given to those who do have degrees who actually need them for their line of work. It increases the value of having a degree if nobody else has it, and diminishes it when everybody does.
A degree needs a job to go with it, or else it just leads to an unfortunate game of requirement creep. The tax benefit of an educated population doesn’t scale linearly. You need much more than that.
If government had anything of a good track record with such forecasts, I would expect there would be a lot more people willing to pay a bit more in taxes if it saved them more money overall. Unfortunately, the track record is just the opposite. Costs are typically understated. Benefits overstated. In large part, that track record is behind the skepticism against tax increases.
As already noted, 100% publicly funded college education amounts to subsidies which will put upward pressure on prices absent some effort to control costs. The schools have no incentives to keep prices down because they government will pay for it. Students do not care about the costs because they are not paying them. Only other good/service which is sold/delivered with neither the seller/provider nor buyer having any incentive to keep costs down is medical services (and not surprisingly, we have cost issues there as well).
We have college grads with problems finding jobs today. And others finding jobs for which no college degree is required. Not sure it makes much sense to increase the number of college grads simply because other countries may have more than we do.
Given the three legged stool of the proposal for 100% publicly funded college (fed support, state support and cost containment measures), what I expect to see is the feds coming through (easy for feds to write checks even if no money is there) and some states (at least) will come through (tougher for states to write checks as they typically have balanced budget requirements which mean other spending must be cut, taxes raised or a combo of the two) and the cost control measures will never take hold. Those measures are much more complicated than writing checks. Result will be the “make it worse” subject of this thread. Many states also have pension issues which will compete with any additional higher ed funding.
And if you talk with people who are cheering “free” college, I think you will find very few who are focusing at all on the “control costs” portion of the equation. Anything that cuts into the “college experience” which at this point has become as much a part of the purpose of college as education, will not be met well. If nothing else, those measures will get kicked down the road (something government is very good at doing) while the costs continue to spiral upwards.
I don’t really agree. First of all, costs are generally understated and benefits overstated not just by governments but also by private entities. It’s in human nature to be optimistic about costs/benefits and not to expect an unusual and unpleasant setback to occur. Government has this problem but it’s not alone. Second of all, it only seems like the government track record is bad because no one complains about successes. New freeway reduces congestion and improves the city? No one complains. New bridge was poorly designed and has to be restructured, leading to millions in cost overruns? Grab the torches and pitchforks. This is how it always works - bureaucracy is only noticed when it doesn’t run smoothly, not when it does.
Yes, which is why a system more like the one I proposed, and less like “everything we have now, but FREE” is more likely to actually work. You need to combine government subsidies with effective price controls to bring costs down. Otherwise you’re just passing the bill.
This is true. Although the problems are not so much in quantity, but in requirement creep and in quality of graduates. There needs to be systematic change to preserve value in a college degree.
It has to be a gradual process. Cut out the bad actors (for-profits mostly), create a subsidized structure for the cheapest part of education (e.g. community colleges), expand the scope of the inherently cheaper schools, and reduce the tendency of more expensive schools to be expensive while maintaining quality. It wouldn’t work as a single “Socialized Education Act” but as a series of improvements that eventually either make college free, or make it close enough that it doesn’t really make a difference either way.
Everyone has pension issues.
Very few people want to talk about the unpleasant details of paying for a free college system. This is always true of any issue. The real question needs to be, will the policies reach the desired goal or will they fail?