The Undergraduate Experience

Recently a student graduated from one of our department's undergraduate programs; not the program I teach in, but a related one. The student's parents wrote to the chancellor and the provost to complain that the student had, during the entire time in the program, never once taken a course from an actual professor.

Now, the truth of this may be sort of beside the point. I wouldn't be surprised if the student took a number of courses from professors but assumed that they were TAs, especially if the student's instructors were younger, female, or faculty of color. Undergrads are often not very clear on who is a TA and who is a professor. But let's assume for a moment that this was actually true. Our dean wrote to our chair and asked our chair to compose a response to this email.

The chair did some investigating and found that in this program, about 13% of courses are taught by professors and not TAs. So that's a pretty low percentage, and it's probably possible that one could go through without taking a course from a professor.

Why are so many courses taught by TAs?

1) Ten years ago, we were a department of 50 faculty. Now we are a department of 28 faculty. We have had lines cut, and of those lines that still exist, 12 are unfilled. In the meantime, our course commitments have not decreased, so we have as many courses to teach with fewer faculty to teach them. TAs make up the difference.

2) In some areas of our department, the only way graduate students can be funded is through TAships. (In my area, we have research assistantships through grants, but this is not possible for all areas, because federal granting agencies do not fund all types of research). We do not have a block of money from the college or the university or the system or the state to support graduate students. Therefore, we support them with TAships. This encourages courses taught by TAs rather than faculty.

3) As a research institution, our faculty are engaged in research and grant-funded activities, which can include course buyouts. When we buy out from courses, we teach fewer courses. Our buyout money funds TAs to teach the courses instead. The department makes money this way, because you can pay for more TAs to teach more sections with the equivalent chunk of a faculty member's salary.

4) We have both undergraduate and graduate programs. Only professors can teach the doctoral courses, whereas TAs can teach the undergraduate courses. This means that professors end up disproportionally teaching doctoral courses, because nobody else can do this for us. In contrast, a liberal arts college with a primarily (or solely) undergraduate mission means that there will not be doctoral courses, so the faculty will be teaching undergrads. In addition, teaching can be a stronger part of the mission there, as opposed to what occurs at a giant research institution. So if you want your kid to be in classes taught mostly by professors, it's probably a better bet to go to a small liberal arts college, rather than to a university.

There is an assumption that being in a course taught by a professor is better than being in a course taught by a TA, and this is often not the case. TAs are doctoral students who will, in a year or two, themselves be professors. They can often be very strong teachers. Some professors can be terrible teachers. However, I can certainly understand a parent's complaint that his or her child hadn't been able to take courses with professors.

Once upon a time we had a hard-line budget for supporting doctoral students, and didn't have to rely as much on TAships. Once upon a time we had 50 faculty instead of 28 to teach the same number of undergraduate courses. Once upon a time our state's contribution to our operating budget was 3 times as large as it is now. All of these changes result in fewer opportunities for faculty to teach undergrads.