IANAProfessor, nor do I want a career in academia, but I am currently a university student with grad-student friends who are considering careers in academia.
My own university system, the State System of Higher Education in PA does not use TAs at all. All classes are taught by professors. In fact, my freshman-level Introduction to World Civilization course is taught by a full professor, by his choice. He’s got the seniority to get the courses he wants, but prefers to teach freshmen, in addition to Russian history, which is his specialty.
If you don’t want to do research, you might still do well in a smaller university system, especially if you enjoy teaching and student interaction.
Robin
Just because you don’t have to do as much research doesn’t mean you don’t have to do research. To get the Ph.D., you must contribute notably new information to the field (assuming that history hasn’t devalued its degrees). In addition, before you get a tenure job as a professor, you have to survive postdoctoral appointments, which almost always require more research.
I might point out, by the way, that the “doesn’t use TAs” is really not all that laudable. I’ve never known the university where an undergraduate who approaches a professor will be turned away, if only because the professor will be so shocked that the kids don’t run like mice. If you really want to talk to a professor, you’re more than able to. In the meantime, grad students in many fields are at least as qualified to teach the intro material as tenures are. If anything, grad students are more flexible and make easier connections to their classes.
Being a TA (or even a full instructor: TA just means doing the grading or running discussion sections) gives the graduate students, many of whom are going to be looking for careers in academia, invaluable experience teaching. Would you like to be taught by a new professor coming out of a grad school where they didn’t get any training in how to teach? I’ve had that kind of prof and it’s awful. Besides, if graduate students don’t have teaching positions available, they must find other ways to raise tuition. If the school gives a stipend and gets nothing for it (teaching staff), they have to justify that to their regents. If a school doesn’t give a stipend and students aren’t teaching, then they must either go (further) into debt for grad school, study part-time while holding a “real” job, or be among the landed gentry.
At the risk of sounding like a political advertisement, “Grad students teaching: good for undergraduates, good for schools, good for America.”