If he's talking religious ideology, then I would agree with him when it comes to BYU students, and most faculty. They don't all have the same political ideology though. I wonder if "Visiting Professors" have to abide by the same code of conduct students and full time professors have to?

Mormons are actually a lot more open minded than many people give them credit for. BYU is not afraid to allow differing viewpoints to be heard. One tenet of their faith is the ability to discern truth through the gift of the Holy ghost. I know they allow diverse points of view on the BYU campus, but they draw the line at instructors contradicting church doctrine.

I wonder if the use of TAs or "Teaching Assistants" (what we called them), is akin to hospitals using interns...cost.

If tenured professors had to teach the myriad classes that were being offered at the universities, I would suspect tuition costs would rise a LOT faster than they currently do. That is the same justification the medical community uses for staffing interns to do the grunt patient work...keeps costs down.

Another issue is the shear amount of classes in a day. Some classes that are required for every student have so many sections that there aren't enough professors available for all of them. For instance, some classes at Utah State were available from 7:30 AM to 10 PM. There is so much extra work required, that many Profs only teach 3 or 4 classes per day. I don't know how many classes he taught, but I remember one very dedicated Astronomy Professor who taught my class in the morning, (10:30 AM IIRC) and usually didn't head home til 9:30 or 10. (I could see his car from my dorm room.) He was in his 60s, but his stamina was better than mine.

I substituted for an Architect who taught some construction drawings courses in the interior design program here at PU a few years ago. I had a lecture class and one unit of design studio. There was a personalble young woman grad student who taught the other design studio.

I had about a half dozen groups who all worked on the same design problem. Two groups worked their a$$ off and did quality work, a few who were so so and several individuals who missed a lot of studios and showed up late and worked on other things during the studio time.

I gave two groups A's and varoius other grades including D's to a couple of girls who by the attendance guidelines given me to use should rightly have been failed.

The grad student I learned later gave all A's.

So the underachievers hated me.

Grrrrrrr!

Tom,
I appreciate that sought to maintain standards in this culture.
I bet the under-achievers had very good self-esteem.

My son is aprofessor of Music at West Chester. he failed 2 ROTC students, partially for nonperformance, but cheating on the final was the final nail in their coffins. They failed to graduate, and were forced to pay back the ROTC program. If you don't want to do the work, don't take the course.

My wife went to Ohio Wesleyan University - smaller Private school, tuition = $25k/yr (she had lots of debt and scholarships).
She never had a TA, and she graduated with 2 BS's (German and biology-something) in 4 years.

I went to the University of cincinnati (tuition = 9k/yr ? not sure) with a stack of xfer credits from the Navy nuclear program. It still took me 5 years to get out with a BS Mechanical Engineering technology, with more than a few TA's and little/no debt.

Its easy - pay more for school, and you get fewer TA's.

-John

That's certainly a big part of it, controlling educational costs is a challange. I'm currently looking at secondary schools for my daughter, good ones seem to be about the same tuition as mid-range colleges.

The recent rise in the cost of a college education bears very little relation to anything other than the fact that they can.
35 or so years ago I got a BS at a cost of $12/ credit hour, and a Masters at $17/ hr.
I refused to pay for a second Bachelor's at John's Hopkins because they wanted about $45/ hr.

Pure inflation does not get you from those numbers to today's costs; neither does the cost of the modern technology. The profs, and TAs certainly don'y get it. Maybe its the administration that is vastly overpaid.

I don't know what's driving current costs, it's certainly exceeding the general rate of inflation. I was able to pay my tuition at a state university by working part time minimum wage jobs, I don't believe that would be possible today. I'm estimating at least $100K for my daughter's undergrad education, I don't think she's going to earn $25K per year working at the local McD so I'll probably be writing some large checks.

If I'm not mistaken, the RatemyProfessor embedded in MySpace has more reviews.--oops, looks like MySpace removed that feature.

My wife and I helped our son with his Bachelor's, and Masters. He also took some loans. By the time he did his Doctorate, he was able to demand that they give him a free ride and a stipend to boot.
Maybe that is why some parents oush their kids into competitive sports--hoping they'll get a sports scholarship to assist with the costs. I don't think the debating, or chess teams get must scholarship money. OTOH, in most cases the major sports programs are money cows for the schools, bringing in more than they cost.

LOL, I don't think my daughter will be getting any sports scholarships (although she may actually be able to get a music scholarship). I don't mind paying for her tuition, but I agree the cost has increased in excess of inflation without any real cause that I understand. You can usually get some kind of fellowship for grad school, depending on your field.

I have had several graduate students teach classes I needed and found them to be very good overall. They were enthusiastic, challenging and very comfortable teaching. Of course these were graduate students in the fine art department so that may have something to do with it. I received better instruction from the graduate students at times then i did the professors. As far as paying 1100.00 for a course- consider yourself lucky....

One solution might be to accredit instructors instead of universities. I know a lot of adjunct instructors who could make a lot more money by selling themselves directly to the students rather than to the university. In some disciplines it would be very easy for instructors to offer reduced prices compared to existing university tuition.

I had a TA for my sociology class a year ago. She was incredibly passionate about the subject and I must say I enjoyed it. It probably helped that both my professor and TA both had that sexy librarian thing going on.

<3 Dr. Rebecca Plante

Other then that the TAs for my comm classes are all there to assist with equipment and other misc questions, not to teach the class.