<p>Judging from some of the comments on the article, quite a few Yalies themselves do not buy this “undergraduate focus” thing:</p>
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<p>Another myth exposed.</p>
<p>The claim that Yale is so much better, and “undergraduate-focussed” than “other large research universities” (hint-hint who we’re talking about!) has always been phony.</p>
<h2>Now that the facts are grudgingly revealed, the rationalizing and obfuscating gets turned up a notch.</h2>
<p>The “problem” is the phoniness of the claim, meant to tout Yale’s superiority.</p>
<p>I don’t think there is a major problem with assistance provided by graduate students - either at Yale or at the unnamed “other major research universities” where the practice is substantially similar - no matter what the tour guides say.</p>
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<p>Ordinarily this bragging about “all the professors teach”, and “no grad students teach”, and “Professors rather than TA’s interact with undergrads” is the sort of thing you hear from admissions officials at the smaller liberal arts colleges.</p>
<h2>They are trying to make a virtue out of necessity: obviously, if you have no graduate programs, you won’t have any grad students or TA’s to deal with, for good or ill. The flip side of the coin is that the best professors - and those doing the most significant work on the frontiers of knowledge - are far more likely to be found in those “large research universities”.</h2>
<p>One of the 10 Worst Things About Yale: awful sections with clueless, talentless, tasteless, incompetent-but-high-scoring grad students.</p>