> It's certainly not due to inflation in quality of education. More and more classes are taught by graduate students and adjuncts rather than actual professors (who are mostly focused on their research programs in order to earn tenure).
UGH! These kind of comments make me so angry. Sure, lots of graduate students are sub par due to inexperience or distraction or pure, simple busy-ness, but lots and lots of professors don't give a damn either. I TA'd on and off for about five years, sometimes spending 20-30 hours a week meeting with students and doing 1:1 sessions with them to help them learn whatever topics the course required. Did I sometimes get stumped by a slightly off-the-beaten-path question in a recitation section? Sure. But I'd still take a motivated grad student over many of the professors I suffered through.
(And to be fair, tons of--perhaps even most--graduate students don't give a damn either. But the problem isn't "More and more classes taught by graduate students and adjuncts", it's a combination of "Lack of interest in being a good teacher" and "Lack of interest in incentivising good teaching".)
Fair point. The mere fact of having earned a PhD does not automatically make a person a great teacher, and lacking one does not make a person a bad teacher. I certainly had a few full professors who were phoning it in every class, droning over their 20 year old lecture notes.
However, in my undergraduate experience, the most interesting and memorable classes were taught by active professors with many years of teaching experience, who also had a good research program. It helped a lot when they would teach class material, and also connect it to what was current in their field of research.
FWIW my best undergrad classes were taught by endowed lecture chairs, e.g. professors who were paid extra by the university to stop caring about and doing research and instead focus solely on teaching.
No one is saying that it is bad to have TAs than professors. But the default assumption is that if a college increases tuition fees, then they are probably hiring better professors. But if you increase fees and hire lowly paid TAs, then that is certainly not fair is it? (or atleast increase TA's salary!)
PS: I actually hated most of my TAs and loved the courses where the professor didn't use a TA and was involved in teaching, himself.
UGH! These kind of comments make me so angry. Sure, lots of graduate students are sub par due to inexperience or distraction or pure, simple busy-ness, but lots and lots of professors don't give a damn either. I TA'd on and off for about five years, sometimes spending 20-30 hours a week meeting with students and doing 1:1 sessions with them to help them learn whatever topics the course required. Did I sometimes get stumped by a slightly off-the-beaten-path question in a recitation section? Sure. But I'd still take a motivated grad student over many of the professors I suffered through.
(And to be fair, tons of--perhaps even most--graduate students don't give a damn either. But the problem isn't "More and more classes taught by graduate students and adjuncts", it's a combination of "Lack of interest in being a good teacher" and "Lack of interest in incentivising good teaching".)