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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some of my best teachers in college were grad students!

Not my experience at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some of my best teachers in college were grad students!

Students are not the best judge of teachers. Students want likability, fun, and ease. High grades given to students correlate with high evaluation scores. Students often can't tell if a grad student actually knows the material. It's incredulous that many teaching evaluations ask students to rate the competence and knowledge base of the instructor--how would they know if they're being fed BS?
Yes, there are excellent graduate students who teach well, but they're inexperienced and cheap labor for the university. With few exceptions, I would strongly encourage high school students to consider SLACs for undergrad where the teaching quality is overall much higher than at a research university.
-Tenured prof at R1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because I pay $90k/year.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

I'd argue plenty of professors are NOT "dedicated to teaching". Many are at the university to do research. They hate teaching entry level/lower level undergrad courses and as such, suck at it and don't really care. IN that case, I'd rather have a TA would is working their ass off to teach. Or a "lecturer"---they are there to teach and typically are much better at it.

At LACs they are indeed dedicated to teaching.

LACs don’t attract the types who only want to do research.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some of my best teachers in college were grad students!

Students are not the best judge of teachers. Students want likability, fun, and ease. High grades given to students correlate with high evaluation scores. Students often can't tell if a grad student actually knows the material. It's incredulous that many teaching evaluations ask students to rate the competence and knowledge base of the instructor--how would they know if they're being fed BS?
Yes, there are excellent graduate students who teach well, but they're inexperienced and cheap labor for the university. With few exceptions, I would strongly encourage high school students to consider SLACs for undergrad where the teaching quality is overall much higher than at a research university.
-Tenured prof at R1

+10,0000

SLACs offer tremendous value relative to top research universities (where undergrads are generally seen as nothing more than a nuisance to be dealt with). I would definitely not recommend for HS students to come to my own university for their undergrad education.

- Another Tenured Prof at R1.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because I pay $90k/year.

+1

+2

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

+1 to me this is one of the most important reasons to value the opportunity to build relationships with full professors

This is only relevant though if you're going into academia in that field. If you want connections in your actual professional field, adjuncts would be more likely to have those.

New poster. Not true.

Building relationships with professors can help in many fields. It's not just adjuncts who have real-world connections, PP. Source: My recent SLAC graduate whose full professors have been helpful to DC post-graduation with connections and resources for finding jobs and grad programs. (In four years my DC had only two adjuncts as a teacher and zero TAs teaching. Small classes taught by profs were one big reason DC wanted a SLAC, and DC got to know several profs well.)