If you think it matters that your kid's classes be taught by a professor: Why?

[Anonymous]

LACs beat top universities hands down in the quality of the teaching. There is literally no comparison.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My TAs in college (t10) were awful.
Incoherent
Unorganized
Some barely spoke English

+1

Can we name names?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:LACs beat top universities hands down in the quality of the teaching. There is literally no comparison.

Some LACs maybe…but there are a ton of crap LACs out there.

[Anonymous]

Faculty brat here. I’m definitely concerned about the exploitation of adjuncts. It’s appalling.

It’s true that some TAs make great teachers but I like professors because they are experts and they are dedicated to teaching, not doing it in the side while they earn a degree. Some TAs enjoy teaching and are good. Some do it because they have to. No one chooses to become a professor unless they truly love teaching. Competition is fierce, you can’t control where you live, and you don’t make much money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:LACs beat top universities hands down in the quality of the teaching. There is literally no comparison.

Well, there is a comparison if someone disagrees with you. As well they might—people seem to think there are just 2 options here: liberal arts colleges & huge universities. When in fact medium-sized universities might offer the best of both worlds.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's always been so weird to me that we require all these qualifications to teach elementary and secondary school, but anyone in a PhD program with zero teaching pedagogy is apparently qualified to teach a class. I remember that time of my life when all my friends were TAs... Some of them were really good at it and loved it. Others complained about their students all the time. It's two of the latter that are the only ones I know still teaching--they got tenure. Fancy schools, too.

There are people getting their PhDs with no teaching experience and no particular interest in teaching, or at least not in teaching undergraduates, or not in teaching early undergraduates. They get doctorates at fancy schools and are hired by fancy schools and they write really good lectures using the latest knowledge. Then they get tenure, and they keep giving the same lectures until they retire.

That's not all of them, of course. It's not even most of them. But at my undergraduate institution, assistant professors who couldn't teach left. At my graduate institution, assistant professors who didn't publish left. (And by left, I don't mean they jumped. I mean they were pushed.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I'm a prof. I definitely got better by my eighth or tenth class. ... It also depends on ... .

Yes, I'm also a professor. Research university science departments get funded by grants, so they emphasize publications. Business schools get funded by tuition, so they care more about teaching. In all cases, experience tends to improve teaching. If nothing else, the department learns to shift bad teachers to courses where they do less damage. More generally, you want stability, not a new Ph.D. student or adjunct adapting to a new course.

Ultimately, you want to learn from someone is gets paid more, with more experience, qualifications, and connections. I know the textbook authors and have worked in industry. I am opinionated (and correct!) about the right way to think about my field. When I write letters of recommendation to graduate school, other professors know me and my credibility. Sometimes I still teach badly, but I'm certainly better and more consistent now.

Here is a comparison. Some of my doctors have been young with limited experience and authority, and they overreact to random blood tests. Older, experienced doctors just shrug their shoulders and rerun the tests. I feel better in experienced hands.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I'm a prof. I definitely got better by my eighth or tenth class. ... It also depends on ... .

Yes, I'm also a professor. Research university science departments get funded by grants, so they emphasize publications. Business schools get funded by tuition, so they care more about teaching. In all cases, experience tends to improve teaching. If nothing else, the department learns to shift bad teachers to courses where they do less damage. More generally, you want stability, not a new Ph.D. student or adjunct adapting to a new course.

Ultimately, you want to learn from someone is gets paid more, with more experience, qualifications, and connections. I know the textbook authors and have worked in industry. I am opinionated (and correct!) about the right way to think about my field. When I write letters of recommendation to graduate school, other professors know me and my credibility. Sometimes I still teach badly, but I'm certainly better and more consistent now.

Here is a comparison. Some of my doctors have been young with limited experience and authority, and they overreact to random blood tests. Older, experienced doctors just shrug their shoulders and rerun the tests. I feel better in experienced hands.

Generalities…the fact remains that many tenured professors are in cruise control regarding undergrad teaching, or were never very good to begin with. Even at schools that use TAs, they will usually be at intro-level courses in which they will do just fine & your kid will have plenty of professors for other classes. This whole topic is being magnified by some people to appear more meaningful than it really is.

[Anonymous]

You are paying a lot of money for 5 classes. The least they can do is give real professors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Profs develop the courses, read widely, are active researchers, have deep expertise from both PhD and time spent working in the field. If they are active researchers, they need to keep up with current practice. They have a network and will likely be working at the school and in the field for a long time and thus can be tapped for future references/advice/network support.

Yeah but many really suck. Being an active researcher doesn't mean you want to devote any time to your classes; in fact often professors who are into research would rather just be doing that instead of teaching and put the bare minimum into it.

OP I say that my preference would be professors, just because with professors you can look on ratemyprofessor.com and see how good they are. I have had TAs and grad students who were better teachers than real professors but I think your best bet is knowing what you're getting into before taking a class.

This be true. Full professors dedicated to research do not prioritize the classroom. Tenure track professors are desperately trying to publish and bring status to the institution, and hopefully secure a tenured job offer.
As for adjuncts, they are a suckered lot. There is a phd glut, the career prospects aren't great. After a few unfruitful gigs at local colleges they are jaded.
TAs haven't reached the above levels yet. They are still fresh and full of energy for their area of study. But seasoned teachers they ae not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why are you paying $85,000 a year to have a 23 year old grad student who might not even have a Masters yet teaching your child?

+100

I was a TA my first year after I graduated with my B.S.

[Anonymous]

It's 2024. Anyone talking about "quality of lecture" is clueless. Learning from a local live lecture is well obsolete.

School is for collaborative discussion, tutoring and feedback. Lectures are on YouTube.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You are paying a lot of money for 5 classes. The least they can do is give real professors.

Pro tip: And make sure your students show up for those classes. It's literally like lighting money on fire every time they skip or don't do an assignment that really was formulated to teach them something.

- Professor

[Anonymous]

They write better recommendations

[Anonymous]

The purpose of college is not job preparation, it is intellectual preparation for the entire life course. This means being exposed to controversial ideas, participating in the creation of new knowledge, and understanding how to critically assess propositions put before you. It also means resisting bad ideas even when they are advanced by people who pay you (which is why thinking of college as job preparation is such a disastrous mistake).

Academic freedom protects all of this. Tenured faculty have it. Nobody else teaching at the college level—TAs, adjuncts, nontenure-track faculty—does, no matter how good they may be at delivering lectures or any of the other constituent tasks of the job—and many are stupendously good.