<p>Some colleges are sending students’ papers to Virtual-TA, a private company with employees in India, to be graded. The director of business law and ethics studies at the University of Houston defends the practice.</p>
<p>I could hardly believe it when I read it, but we outsource so much else, maybe it is inevitable, but no way can I see this as a positive development for higher education. Why not have TAs grade the papers, or encourage professors to spend more time on teaching and less on research? </p>
<p>Honestly, this horrifies me. As a grader, I am always willing to meet with a student to discuss a grade on an exam or essay and go over it with them, helping them prepare better for the next one. I can’t imagine you get anywhere near the same service with outsourcing.</p>
<p>As for for the TAs being overwhelmed by “staggering” amounts of grading - please. That’s part of our job. I grade for a 150 person auditorium class, take a full courseload, have a decent social life, and had time to crank out an extra research paper that I’ll be presenting at a conference in my field this month. I’m a first year student.</p>
<p>I am not yet sure how I feel about it. The key issue is quality: if the feedback and grading is accurate, fair and consistent, it is not different (and may be better) than grading which is outsourced to TAs. There is no reason to think its lesser quality, and there is no reason graders in India can not meet with students or why professors can not go over feedback with them. It very much depends upon the quality of what they provide as a service, nature of the assignments being graded (problem sets? case memos? exams? essays?), the grading criteria, faculty oversight and so forth. </p>
<p>The reality, and REAL debate, should be not whether it is okay to outsource to India but whether it is okay to outsource AT ALL. Students and their families have absolutely NO IDEA just how much professors do not do their own grading. It’s a gigantic and normal practice, that is done at even the tippy top and most expensive schools, and it’s just not something we talk about openly. </p>
<p>Why is it done? A matter of priorities and economics. I actually do my own grading by choice, so I’m not being defensive here. But it’s a matter of trade offs. Here are some possible trade offs. </p>
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<li><p>I could have much smaller classes but faculty labor is expensive…so not economical to have classes that are 5-10 students, maybe doable at some schools to have classes of 10-20…others the norm is 50-100 students and cash strapped publics might have mega-lectures. </p></li>
<li><p>If I have a larger class, I could do my own grading and provide feedback, but to be realistic it would involve fewer assignments and not as much feedback (so its not nearly as developmental as it might otherwise be).</p></li>
<li><p>If I have a larger class, I could have a lot more developmental assignments and provide detailed grading and feedback to make them truly really useful, but it would take say 30 hours of my week to do so. Not realistic as my work week is say 50 hours and involves also classroom teaching, meeting students, overseeing independent studies, supervising graduate students, helping to coach case teams, preparing classes, designing curriculum, attending and running endless administrative meetings that involve decisions and actions that keep the university going, AND doing research (which is also very important to students, because WHAT we teach in the classroom comes from research and no where else).</p></li>
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<p>These are just examples of course and I’m not condoning anything one way or another. My real point being most of us are not privvy to the complexity and trade offs involved and why some schools or professors do what they do.</p>
<p>Students navigating university use of TAs can be a bit of a surprise but they do eventually wind up learning the structure. It’s no different in the workforce where you work with people in other departments, contractors and employees in other parts of the world. There are headaches here and there but you deal with them.</p>
<p>The issues with outsourcing are similar to what we see with companies. Suppose your writing includes samples from a local baseball game or political topic or television show or a protest on campus. The students can reasonably assume that the professor and TAs know about it but would someone in India or Singapore know about it?</p>
<p>At the colleges I am familiar with, TAs are expected to attend all lectures. They help develop questions on quizzes and exams. They not only grade, they also provide feedback on papers and problem sets. They get together regularly to discuss grading policy so that grading is uniform throughout sections. Profs also hold weekly sections so that TAs can exchange tips, discuss study questions, and get guidance from the profs.</p>
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<p>I’m curious how graders in India are expected to meet with students? Professors are loath to go over feedback with students (speaking as the parent whose S had concerns about a problem, but whose TA left for Europe and could not/would not be contacted. The prof never did go over the (lack of) feedback and S had to try to figure out on his own where he had gone wrong and whether the grade was justified (he still thinks it was not). Since the reason for outsourcing is usually large size classes that make it difficult for profs to grade on their own, I doubt that they would welcome hordes of students with questions about grades or feedback (or more likely, lack of it).</p>
<p>warblersrule: I hope you are not the only grader for the 150 students in that class!</p>
<p>Theoretically, the graders in India could meet with students online. I guess I don’t see this as all that different from the way online classes work now. But I don’t think students should be paying live prices for online services.</p>
<p>^ Yup. I meet with students on line and in person. I do some parts of class on line. I talk to coauthors and write papers with people on the other side of the global with skype and google docs. This doesn’t seem like a problem to me. </p>
<p>I and spouse teach in a very large public institution that is entirely research focused. I don’t know any faculty we work with who don’t go over feedback on grading with their students when asked. If my kid wasn’t getting that kind of service, I’d be complaining very loudly.</p>
<p>I work with people in India and we usually do email with a one-day lag. I don’t want to be doing online chat at 2:00 AM on a regular basis.</p>
<p>The article said that many of their workers are mothers at home with children running around. It’s sometimes hard to get in good quality time with someone in interrupt mode doing childcare.</p>
<p>I would be interested in knowing more about the outcome of this practice. Nearly every publisher of college textbooks outsources the editorial/production work to India. I used to work in this field and I can tell you that the quality of the work done in India is not as high as the work done here. However, the Indian outsourcing groups work for such a small amount of money that even if they have to redo the work several times before getting it right, it’s still cheaper than having the work done in the US.</p>
<p>And I would like to add that I find it troublesome that service is “anonymous” and will not provide info on the type of degree granted, etc. TAs are first accepted into the university’s graduate program and then matched with those classes which fit their expertise best. The lack of oversight and accountability in this area as well is stunning. </p>
<p>I also agree with this quote in the article:</p>
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<p>Universities exist in part to facilitate communication between peers (so, undergrad-undergrad, undergrad-grad) and professors. The process of submission of work for grades and feedback is an important part of this developing relationship, as you take things you learn in class, translate them into your work, and then get feedback and start over again, improving each time. If this is not a function of the university, then go and read a textbook? Everyone should just self-educate if the feedback relationship isn’t important. I have a problem with how TAs are used oftentimes as well, as they sometimes stand as a go-between between a relationship with the prof, rather than just “extra help.” Now we are getting to the point where supposedly even the once-removed TAs cannot give feedback? That shows that clearly the object of the university is spiraling down, fast. Once you get to the point where you’re using a service like this to grade papers, you should ask yourself if the class is really set up in the right way, or if the university is set up in the right way.</p>
<p>I watched a video lecture course taught by Margaret Anderson at Berkeley a few years ago and she introduced all of the TAs and their backgrounds during the first class. They had a wide variety of interests in different areas of the world (it was a European History course). One benefit that students could get from this introduction is the knowledge of the specialty areas of their TAs - and I imagine that they could go to those TAs to talk about areas of mutual interest, perhaps, outside of the course.</p>
<p>There are somethings where a personal level of service beats someone on the phone or someone that is anonymous or someone that you never see. Apple has certainly capitalized on this with the high level of service that you get at their retail stores - the experience is head and shoulders above other vendors that require your use of outsourced phone support.</p>
<p>"Theoretically, the graders in India could meet with students online. I guess I don’t see this as all that different from the way online classes work now. But I don’t think students should be paying live prices for online services. "</p>
<p>You do realize that there’s about an 11 hour difference between the US and India depending on region? That’s going to seriously limit the hours during which you can realistically get students and graders together. </p>
<p>My company has a development site in Bangalore and we face this issue daily. It’s terribly inefficient to email back and forth. We also have teleconference resources but even then it’s not very productive.</p>
<p>Not defending the practice, but based on when I can get MY kid on the phone, an 11 hour difference would be just about perfect. I would love it if my 11 am self could talk to the midnight him.</p>
<p>My son’s school is in a consortium to provide US University courses online to students in Australia and maybe China. These are being run by the evening school and it looks like it will be a profit center for the school. I saw a lot more online course offerings than I’ve seen before.</p>
<p>It may be that those teaching these courses will work in the wee hours of the morning for their courses. My son’s manager (he works at the tutoring center) has asked the tutors if they want to work more hours to handle the evening college students where work would be in the evening instead of during the day. I expect the online courses to provide tutoring services as that is what the school provides. I wonder if they will ask student tutors to work the third shift for overseas online courses. This is the first year for this so it’s all an experiment. I believe that there is a company or organization in the other country that manages the local physical needs (books, registration, counseling, etc.)</p>
<p>My biggest concern is not the virtual nature of the work and interaction. It’s the separation of grading from other forms of TA work. Even as an undergraduate Course Assistant, S was expected to lead sections in which he explained part of lectures the students were unclear about, responded to their requests for tips on how to do problems, and gave mini-lectures on related topics, time permitting. He was also supposed to hold office hours. Maybe there’s a good reason why we forked over so much money for our Ss’ education…</p>
<p>I agree about your separation issue. I just wanted to point out that we’re not single-minded in moving everything offshore. My son has had some pretty bad TAs. One of them just came over from Nepal and had no idea as to what he was supposed to do in the labs. My son eventually went to see the lab director and they managed to make the rest of the semester somewhat worthwhile. I’ve heard of similar disasters in very good private schools. One particular school tried hiring TAs from China. Well the TA got a high TOEFL score but he was functionally illiterate in English - they only found that out when he arrived. I think that they did a phone call with him when he was in China but perhaps a relative actually took the call. Stuff happens.</p>
<p>Unintelligible TAs are a common cause for complaints even at the top schools. One would assume that the Indian graders do speak English (though sometimes not all that intelligibly as anyone who has dealt with a service representative based in Bangalore can attest.
My H’s company has a small branch in India, but the bulk of the work, especially the more high level kind is done here.</p>
<p>Wow. It’s hard to believe that they do this for cost reasons. TAs are not paid much. However, in places with lots of undergrads and not so many grad students they might have trouble recruiting just finding the bodies. Clearly 7 TAs for 1000 students isn’t enough.</p>
<p>My H is a professor. He gets a TA if the class has sections, and then the TA is responsible for both teaching the section and grading the papers. H spends quite a bit of time with them on teaching methods, subject matter, and student issues. Hard to see how that could be outsourced.</p>
<p>If he’s teaching a class with more than 40 kids and no sections, then he gets a reader. If it weren’t for the fact that this is an easy way for the University to support its grad students, readers could probably be outsourced pretty easily.</p>
<p>Maybe the problem here is with the definition of a “TA”</p>