In a thread on the value of college education I noticed the following remarks:
Are larger/less advanced classes typically taught by lower ranking professors at your college or university?
So far I studied at two Universities, at one large department (Computer Science) as well as a small one (Computational Linguistics.) In both cases from day one some of your classes were taught by the most senior professors of the department. Of course some classes were also taught by rank-and-file PhDs. For some introductory classes that weren’t anybody’s specialty, the professors took turns. It was an open secret that some professors were more enthusiastic about that than others, but they couldn’t really refuse.
I go to The Ohio State University and my freshmen physics lecture had approximately 150-200 students and was taught by a bonafide professor. As far as I know every class but my freshman English class which was taught by a grad student (from China interestingly enough) was taught by a PhD. My diffeq teacher may have just been a lecturer but I am fairly sure he had a PhD. I am starting to move up into the upper level courses of my major and my Thermodynamics class is taught by the guy who wrote one of the most popular Themodrynamics books.
In MIT 35 years ago (groan) it depended on the department. Physics and Math had asst profs do the lectures and Assoc/full profs do the recitation sections. EE and Bio had Full profs do the lectures and TAs do the quiz sections. I think metallurgy did also, but that class was so easy I forget. Higher level classes had profs do a smaller section.
I went to grad school in Illinois, and there a full prof or almost tenured one would teach the big lecture and we TAs did quiz sections. When I moved to UL I was appointed a lecturer for a term and had classes all my own. But that was a compromise to keep them from ripping me off by making me teach for nothing, so it wasn’t too standard.
In CS I get the general impression that the “service” courses - basic programming - were a chore that had to be done but was not exactly desired.
My daughter at UC might have a class or two taught by TAs, but it was pretty rare. Here economics classes were taught by real professors. I don’t know if she had any big lectures - I’ll have to ask.
When I TAed the Assembly Language class at U of I I always got to teach my Pascal in 3 hours class to the full set of 150 students. I guarantee it was not mind-numbing. Mind-blowing maybe.
At Glasgow University my entry level classes were big (~200 students), but were taught by actual professors. I have never had a class taught by TAs and would be pretty disappointed (to the point where I’d probably consider dropping the class) if it was taught by a TA. My tutorials were also led by professors, but not necessarily the one in charge of the class.
At Auckland Uni, my classes have all been pretty small (~20 students) and taught by professors who are usually well known within the field of whatever they are teaching. The tutorials here however, are led by TAs sometimes. This is ok since the tutorials are not compulsory. I have no idea what the entry level classes are like though - my classes here are all final year classes.
So, no my entry level classes have never been taught by TAs or other lower ranking professors. From what I’ve heard from other students there seem to be 2 approaches that universities use - either entry level classes are TA taught because the prof can’t be bothered with teaching such elementary stuff (pretty lame I think) or the entry level classes are taught by well established professors in order to pique the students’ interest and hopefully get them to choose that subject as their major.
All of this is in reference to philosophy classes (and some econ at Glasgow).
I go to a relatively small state-system school and most of my classes have been taught by professors. I have had a few classes taught by instructors, which were all excellent, especially the one who taught three of my accounting courses. He is a practicing attorney and CPA and teaches courses at my university in addition. He is probably the favorite instructor in the entire College of Business. I only had one class taught by a grad student and that was an English composition course my first semester that I almost but didn’t quite test out of. He was a decent teacher. For the past few semesters, my classes have all been taught by full professors. Grad students tend to proctor exams. I am taking my second degree now, which is chosen by only a few students (the particular degree, I mean), which means that although full professors teach the classes (except for my ECON 404 class, taught by an “instructor”), there are less than twenty students in each class. Often there are only ten or twelve students. These instructors know us well, as they’ve seen us for several semesters, and there is plenty of individual attention.
I have a BS and a BA from the same big, midwestern university. The school of science and the school of liberal arts work differerently.
In the school of science, a real professor teaches the lecture portion of courses, while TAs handle the lab and recitations. The professor’s lecture section would have about 400 students, and each lab/recitation section about 20.
In the school of liberal arts, any given undergraduate course is equally likely to be taught by a TA or by a real professor. There are some “large” lectures (80-200 students) but mostly classes of 35. There’s no real determining factor as to whether it’s taught by a prof or a TA–not the level of the course (as long as it’s undergraduate) or its position in a progression of courses, or the size of the class or anything.
I was a graduate student/TA at UC Berkeley. In my experience all the lecture courses were taught by the faculty, with discussion sections taught by TAs. The one exception in our department was the introductory psychology course, which had some lectures taught by TAs as part of a teacher training seminar. I taught one and had another grad student as a an assistant who taught the sections. The lecture course was smaller than the ones usually taught by professors–100 students rather than the usual 4 or 5 hundred.
I had quite the variety of lectureres when I went to school. Most classes were indeed taught by a professor with a PhD. I never ntoiced a correlation between the more senior professors and the lower level classes. Actually, it seemed lkke a lot fo the high-ups enjoyed teaching the intro. courses, because it was easier material, and helped them remember all the basic stuff they might never use otherwise. I had a couple courses that had a large lecture (100-300 students) with a prof., and then recitations with a TA for supplemental learning, but the TA’s in those classes never introduced new material. I had one course where we only ever saw our professor on CD-ROM video lectures. It was engineering graphics and CAD, and since engineering was the largest school, and every engineer had to take it, it was easier to get one professor (instead of the five or so minimum to do it regular style) and record him onto a CD ROM and hand it out at the start of the semester. Then, once a week, you’d go to a recitation with a TA to ask questions, do in-class assignments, and hand in homework. My section was from 6-9 at night.
I also had another course that was similar to that. it was an online course, so again, no lecture, but no recitation this time, either. The lectures were posted on the web at regular intervals, as were the assignemnts. We would turn in the assignments in the prof or TA’s mailbox in the math building. The class only “met” four times. Once for the initial explaination of how it worked, and then three tests.
I only had one course actually taught by a TA, and that was LITEC (laboratory introduction to embedded control…now you know why we called it LITEC.) It met for three hours, twice a week, and there was one prof. for it, and he was jsut a supervisor type deal. He did make the lectures, but each TA in the secitons taught the students. There wasn’t really much to teahc, though, since we already knew how to program in C and wire electronics. It was mostly part refresher and part learning specific things about the compiller and control board.
I also had one course that was not taught by a professor who didn’t yet haev his PhD…he was still considered a professor (i think he was an assciate prof.), but still had one more semester left to get his PhD when I had him
I went to Boston University. While I did have several large lecture classes, all were taught by actual professors. TAs took care of discussion sections when such were necessary. I did once have a grad student teaching a lab section, which is a more complicated animal than a simple discussion section–however, it wouldn’t have been a problem were it not for some unfortunate language barrier issues.
Math program at a big public university … large undergrad lectures (up to 300 students) were done by faculty (from asst profs to full profs), with smaller discussion sections taught by TAs. The large lecture usually covered theory and broad concepts. The discussion sections focused on detailed examples, solving problems, and q&a. It seemed to work well.
All of my lectures at my university have been taught by professors, as far as I know. This semester I had two huge lecture classes which were broken up in groups of 15-20 for discussions, led by TAs. I’ve gotten the impression in both of them, however, that this isn’t that common here, and that it’s done out of necessity to get us the information rather than just to enrich the course for us. (My Journalism professor actually stood up and apologized for having to have special discussion sections.)
At IU none of my classes (by classes I mean lectures with 300 students) are taught by graduate students. We usually have a lecture and a discussion (or a lab), for a 3 credit hour class we may have 2-3 fifty minute lectures and one fifty minute discussion. The AI only teaches the discussion or lab, you need a doctorate and to be some kind of professor to actualy teach the class.
At IU East (a smaller IU campus) Graduate students didn’t teach but people with masters degrees did the teaching. Same at the community college.
I go to a smallish state school, about 9,500 undergrad students. I’ve only had two classes that were really big, but even they were only around a hundred students. Both were to fill the liberal arts requirements for my major. I have yet to have a single class that has not been taught by a professor, although next year I am going to work as a Peer Instructor for Calc I and II classes. They’re both worth four credit hours; the professor will teach for three hours a week and then they’ll spend an hour of “lab time” with me. I’ll just go over problems on the board and answer questions though. Hopefully, it won’t be any hardcore teaching.
In classes for my major (math, btw), class size ranges from about 15 (Calc IV) to five (Number Theory).
In the math department here, there seems to be certain teachers that teach more of the intro level/liberal arts requirement classes like College Algebra and Finite Math (aka, math for people who don’t like math), but a quick scan of the names on the department webpage says that they’re all Dr. So-and-so.
It could be because of the school size, but there don’t seem to be to many TAs doing the teaching here!
Thanks for your answers!
Apparently that is handled in a similar way in most countries. (Of course many other things are different.)
From what I have read, my introductory CS lectures at my first university have been huge in comparison. We where about 1000 people who had to take that class. Realistically perhaps 600 where there on a usual day (compulsory lectures are rare and unpopular.)
OTOH the lectures at my current department are tiny. Originally we were ten new Comp. Linguistics students in that year, currently six are still there. Together with students from other subjects, we are sometimes 20 people in a lecture, but often significantly fewer. E.g. so far we are two people in one of my courses this year (but I heard that two more will join, so it isn’t that small any more.)
I have a class with a full professor that only has six students right now, Numerical Analysis II which is pretty much the last applied math class here, it was kept because its required to graduate for certain people. I also had a class at the community college I went to that was 3 students (Calc III)
I think partly the reason there are classes with so few students is math majors aren’t very numerous compared to math faculty because everyone has to take some math classes.
Nothing in my Major (Math) that I’ve taken has been a big class, but I started with Calc 3 after taken 1 and 2 from the AP exam. However my school is slightly unusually since there is no graduate school and no TA’s at all.
