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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm interested in your perspective as a faculty member at a large university.  Like you, I went to a small liberal arts college and got a great education,  In 4 years I took only 3 large lecture courses (intro courses in art history, music history and geology), as a freshman I had two seminars, and, all in all, I had an extraordinary opportunity to get one-on-one attention from my very generous professors.  I distinctly remember a renowned economist reviewing sentence-by-sentence a draft of a paper dense with statistics to help me understand how to present that data in a clear and effective way.  Similarly, an English prof, a poet who went on to win a major prize, took the time to review a paper in great detail -- even discussing the choice of a single word I had used to describe Wordsworth's imagery -- what were the implications of that choice and how might a reader respond to it.  I went on to law school where I found that the writing skills I had developed under the guidance of these patient and generous profs were a great asset.  In fact, a law school prof once commented that she could easily guess which of her students had attended a small l/a college and which a large university based on their writing.

Now, my son, a 10th-grader, is intent on going to a large university.  He argues that the grad students at a prestigious research univ. are themselves such strong students that they would make excellent instructors.  Based on your experience supervising such grad students, how would you respond to his argument?    [/quote]

Well, there are a number of perspectives to consider.  First, he's right that GAs are generally strong students, at least in my program.  But my program is small; only the strongest students get admitted.  Other Ph.D. programs may be larger because universities aren't interested only in admitting the number of students the market will be able to bear as graduates; they're interested in tuition and fees.  I hate to say that, but it's true.  And he needs to understand that academic strength is, sadly, only one factor in determining who is admitted to a prestigious Ph.D. program.

But let's assume your son is generally right and that these are uniformly very strong students.  Does it necessarily follow that they will be excellent instructors?  No.  Students seeking Ph.D.s generally have the goal of joining the faculty at a research university where they'll have a very small teaching load and have time and support for research.  Prestigious universities themselves prefer faculty to engage in research to strengthen the university's standing and, increasingly, to bring in grant monies.  Both of these are essential activities for faculty members.  So faculty select grad students who have the potential to be successful at those activities.  Teaching is just not an important part of the equation.  In fact, although this varies across universities, research institutions typically have few if any criteria for teaching effectiveness when evaluating probationary faculty for tenure and promotion.  The criteria (which usually go unstated) deal with publications, grants, and the elusive construct known as "collegiality."  Grad students know the top of the academic heap is a tenured job at a research university, so they cultivate the skills they believe will get them there.  Teaching is not one of those skills.  Faculty push their most talented grad students to seek jobs at top research universities because landing one is a measure of success for the student's home program.

There's one more thing to think about in regard to TAs.  While many are mature and bring diverse professional experience to their instruction, many others do not.  (The former are far more effective teachers than the latter.)  Young teaching assistants are, I think, more likely to blur the boundaries between student and teacher and to have a more difficult time setting limits.  There are certainly exceptions, often glaring ones, but in my opinion this is one more small aspect of the puzzle to consider.

Now there are large state universities that focus more on teaching, regional campuses that don't use TAs as much, that do have criteria for teaching effectiveness, etc.  I used to teach in one of those, in a massive state university system.  I would tell you that even those campuses are strongly pitching research and grants now and pushing faculty in those directions.  They don't have money to support research but the pressure on faculty is significant.  Those professors have heavy teaching loads and many of them generally have what I would call a morale problem.  The goal often is to put in some time there, publish a lot, and move on to somewhere more prestigious with a lighter teaching load.  I had some wonderful colleagues who were terrific teachers in that system, but they were tenured and had been there a long time.  New recruits to that system find they must focus not only on teaching but on research and grants, and they tend to flee at the first opportunity.  I also had tenured colleagues who are frankly counting the semesters to retirement, such is their resentment at their teaching loads.

So I wouldn't say your son is altogether wrong, but I'd caution that his central premise is unsound.  My view is the most highly recruited grad students are not necessarily going to be the best teachers, and, more importantly, their aspirations are probably not going to lie the direction of teaching.  That's not where the glory or the money is, unfortunately.  The tension between teaching and research has always been strong in higher education, and it's only getting worse as institutions push their faculty to bring in grant monies.  [/quote]

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