Graduate Students Teaching College Classes
 

Has anyone else had to deal with this? I'm finishing up college this year and am suffering through a sociology class being taught by a graduate student. I have little motivation to come to class (I go anyway) because she rarely does anything but read from the power point slides, which are posted online. She also seems like one of those students out to prove something by making the classes needlessly over-structured and time consuming. I'm a little frustrated that I'm devoting just as much time with this 100 level class as my 600 level class, thanks to all the busy work. She is a failed real estate agent/developer going through grad school, teaching 50 students at a pay of $1100 for the course.

Looking back on my transcript, I've had 10 grad students as instructors through my college career, and with the exception of 3 or 4 bright bulbs, I've had to suffer through folks that have little idea how to conduct class. One Spanish teacher comes to mind that still had not fully grasped English Grammar or pronunciation, not only making learning difficult, but was cruel to us during the pronunciation portion of the final. Another could not set aside the personal issues she was going through which would boil over in class, regularly stepping out in the hallway to have heated discussions with someone over the phone. She would also without notice not show up to class. When someone complained, the behavior was corrected, but she conducted class very coldly for the remainder of the semester.

While its annoying, I can deal with being a guinea pig while these instructors find their teaching style, but what I don't understand is why I pay the same for a grad student loser as a tenured PHD professor. If I'm getting half the quality or less of an education, I would expect to pay less. I'm paying more to attend a major University, is it so much to expect qualified instructors?

It also makes me question how my University is having so much budgeting issues when a quarter of my college career is being taught by instructors at such a low wage the 4 of an average 30 students per class cover their wage.

Rant over... Time for wiser folks to tell me I'm being a whiny brat and need to work harder. ;)

I had several in college. Most were not very good. A few were. The same was true of the professors. Most of them had the attitude of, "I'm here to do research, and these undergraduates are a waste of my time." Not all were like that, but a lot were. And then there was the math department. Most were from China and couldn't speak English for crap.

I don't give a damn anymore because I'm done. But I have a human resources class which I hate and its BS. She gives out a lot of busy work which at this point I simply refuse to do. I have been in school a long time don't insult me with BS. I'm only doing some of it because my foot is broke and I have nothing better to do. If I was working I wouldn't. Why should I its only worth 10%, getting a c insted of a b or a hardly matters at this point.


I have been very lucky, all of my professors have been pretty good. Other than not being able to understand some of them because they don't speak English well.

My professors in the business and political science programs were mostly great with a few exceptions. With grad students, most were poor, with a few exceptions.

Consider the fact that more than 50% of college courses are taught by part-time instructors and the extent of the problem becomes obvious. $1100 is piss poor pay for a 3 credit college class at a university, graduate student or not. We pay more at a CC.
There's actually no guarantee that a tenured professor will be a better teacher. There are pretty good incentives at a lot of universities not to be a good teacher because it is not rewarded as well as being a good researcher.
For 100 and 200 level courses, I think the odds are you'll get a better instructor at a CC.

Yup, that part of the economics of a University. The professors are under quite a bit of pressure to publish and bring in grant money, and teaching 100 level under-grad classes is not a priority for many of them. Allowing grad students to obtain teaching and research fellowships not only reduces their salary costs but helps them attract grad students. The down side is that the undergrads get to suffer through someone learning to teach. Maybe it's helping to control the cost of tuition, but it's still a PITA. You should get a teaching fellowship when you're in grad school and take revenge on some unsuspecting undergrads.

Now that I think of it I only had one business professor who wasn't that great. He was fresh out of school and had zero real world experiance. So all his lectures were based on the book without anything helpfull thrown in. Most of my other professors were very experianced and brought that to the class.

I taught a 3 credit course at a local college (not university) for less money than that (for resume enhancement prior to quitting my job and becoming a consultant). The fact is that no-one is very interested in low level undergrad classes.

Which college? I used to teach at Columbia College which is out in your direction.

That has been my trend in the last few years. I went from a very nice GPA to mediocre in the last few years. I know what I want to do, I don't care much about school anymore, but I want to finish what I started, and since its a pre-requisite to not looking like a fool nowadays I don't have much of a choice.

Metro State College in Denver. I taught a 400 level engineering technology elective for a couple of evening semesters in about 1996. Mostly older students working on degrees at night. Lots of fun, no money, looked pretty good on my resume. I didn't like the politics so I didn't want to be any more involved than a part-time instructor at the time. Now I travel too much to do any teaching. I keep thinking about getting a full-time teaching gig when I get tired of traveling and "retire."

I used to teach there in the late 80's and early 90's.

Small world, what do you teach?

Philosophy

Just like there can be graduate students with poor teaching skills, there are also plenty of professors that have poor teaching skills. Some are professors to solely do research, others love the education process. Some of the best courses I've had, have been taught by neither graduate student, nor professor, but by staff members.


Putting it into perspective, how much training do you think the foreign (or domestic) graduate students get on teaching?

I've been a TA, RA, GTA and GRA...I like research, and I like teaching. That's not the case for every graduate student that has had a position offered to them. For many, it's simply a financial means.

PS. If you are lucky enough to have the names of the course lecturer / teacher / professor announced while you are selecting courses, ratemyprofessors.com (or like websites) is/are a valuable tool(s).

Are you still teaching, where are you now?

That is how it always is at the larger universities. You're just a number on their balance sheets. I went to a smaller private school which has zero grad student taught classes. This doesn't mean that some of my prof's were not horrible teachers (a few were), but the majority were excellent at what they did, and almost all of them were at PhD level. I'd never go to a school with classes taught by a grad student. Yuck.

Yes. Red Rocks Community College.

This is common in public colleges and universities. Oddly enough, the first time I took Sociology 101 I missed a lot of classes (due to illness) and ended up with c-. Since I was a double Major at the time, I decided to retake the class. The second time the class was taught by a grad student. She was much more animated, which kept the class more interesting. I got an A the 2nd time. Sociology 101 has a lot of curriculum and lots of new vocabulary, so many students find it difficult. For me it was harder than Psychology 101, I also took that the first quarter and managed to pull a B+, even though I missed the same amount of classes.

I had a math instructor who was a grad student from India. He could not relate to students who found math difficult. I was very motivated to succeed, so I tried my best. I ended up withdrawing because I could see the handwriting on the wall. I went to the head of the math department to complain and ask for tips before I withdrew. He said I wasn't the first one to complain, but they were understaffed, so I would either need to go to the math tutors or withdraw. He even wrote me a nice letter in an attempt to help me get some fees back, since the deadline for refunds had passed.

I had another Indian grad student teach my computer science class, and I thought he was a wonderful teacher. The main difference being that he cared about your success, and could put himself in your shoes.

I can also think of 2 professors nearing retirement who seemed to care about little, except getting paid. One taught Social Psychology, which I found quite interesting, so I still managed a C.

On average, the grad students are a little harder to listen too, Probably because they lack the teaching credentials. But bored old professors can be just as bad or worse.

Then there are the tenured professors who are more concerned about political indoctrination than actually teaching a useful skill. I took a class from one of those aging hippy, Marxist types, because everyone was telling me it was an easy A. The course title was "Sex, Drugs and Rock'n Roll". We were taught that it had all been good and shown how it had brought about a much improved society. A couple of religious, conservative types disagreed with a lot of the "Curiculum", and got bad grades. I got my easy A.

I'll 2nd that conclusion. I've been at a CC and I have to say that they almost always have teachers who teach real world knowledge instead of useless copy and paste exercises.

Where I went to school, instructors were almost universally unable to relate to students who found their subjects difficult. Luckily, there were tutors available, at least for certain subjects.

I took a pretty interesting introductory CS class that involved lecture with the professor, plus practical applications with TA's, and a mandatory one on one meeting with another TA. The professor's lectures were generally pretty interesting, the lab section had two TA's, one of whom was a hot (hotter than hot:gorgeous:) redhead. The one on ones (at the College of Computing or CoC for short) were with a fairly good looking chick as well. For some reason I paid more attention in that class than in most of my other classes:D

I only had two of those. One taught a topic based English class. The topic was the influence of race and gender in 19th century British culture. No, I was not aware of that before I signed up for the class. I made an A by basing my papers on the following assumptions:

1. Men bad, women good.
2. Whites bad, people of color good.

Of course, I don't actually hold these views, but I can pretend real good.

The other lefty prof taught a class called Ethics in International Affairs. I actually stuck to my own views on the subject, basically that the title of the course, much like term "Easter Bunny," refers to something that doesn't exist. I still managed a B.

Cool! Was there a lab/prac aps portion of the class?

There have been some studies which show that attractive teachers are rated as better teachers by students.

I can't imagine you're Harold. :D

http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/gSearchResults.jsp?letter=red%20rocks%20community%20college%20philosophy

I wondered how long that would take. You didn't search deeply enough.

Looks like nobody has rated you yet, at least at red rocks.

*edit, meant to say commented.

So, what did you have to do to earn that "hot" rating?

I've wondered that same thing myself.

Yes, this is a good strategy. I looked up the professor I was talking about, and discovered he is still there spewing the same garbage, and giving easy A's to those who agree with his world view. If you aren't a Marxist atheist, watch out. He only approved of weird religions, like eastern philosophies. He hated Devout Mormons, and treated them like dirt, but if he thought you agreed with his views, you were treated like best buds. The main problem with hating Mormons at Utah State University is the fact that they make more than half the student population. I often wondered why he didn't move to the Bay Area, where there were more like minded individuals.

Here is his link on RMP
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=417405&all=1

Cool! Was there a lab/prac aps portion of the class?

Yes, it was much as you described, but the TA from India actually did 80% of the teaching. Since there were several lab times to choose from, there were also many lab assistants. The actual Professor was a 50 ish, former Apple employee. The introductory computing class was 90% Macintosh, with one week devoted to PCs, which were a pain in the ass at the time. (1992)

This line from one of his reviews is hilarious:

"I'm saddened to see he is still indoctrinating the youth of Utah."

It reminds me of a comment by Terry Eagleton, the British Marxist literary critic who is an expert on ideology and who was invited to be a visiting professor at Brigham Young University. He was puzzled beyond belief why Mormons would need to learn anything more about ideology.

Yeah, what did you have to do? One student rates you top quality and HOT!

I'm going to assume you are a pretty good teach, since nobody else has rated you so far.

I didn't know about this website till tonight, and I've looked up several top quality professors I've had. Their ratings are still 3/4 negative comments.

That Dr. Jay Anderson I posted a link to, has the most schizophrenic comments I've seen. He's so political that liberals rate him excellent but conservatives aren't so kind. Calling him a Marxist is a dead giveaway. Students who are Marxists just say how great he is. No need to mention his political philosophy if it agrees with yours.

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.