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From: abc@brl-smoke.ARPA (Brint Cooper )
Newsgroups: soc.college,net.cse
Subject: Re: Who teaches CS classes?
Message-ID: <4789@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 21-Oct-86 20:05:44 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-smok.4789
Posted: Tue Oct 21 20:05:44 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 22-Oct-86 05:45:19 EDT
References: <922@Shasta.STANFORD.EDU> <424@uwai.UUCP>
Reply-To: abc@brl.arpa (Brint Cooper (SECAD/CSMB) <abc>)
Distribution: net
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 42
Keywords: TAs, professors, teaches
Xref: watmath soc.college:88 net.cse:1002

In article <424@uwai.UUCP> honavar@ai.WISC.EDU (Humanoid #1vgh1) writes:
>In article <922@Shasta.STANFORD.EDU> andy@Shasta.STANFORD.EDU (Andy Freeman) writes:
>>Who actually teaches CS classes at other schools?  How are
>>graduate students supported?

>	 Often, there are not enough professors to teach
>	introductory CS courses and TAs have to fill the void. The
>	question of fairness is irrelevant so long as graduate students
>	are not forced to teach against their will and students are not
>	taught by incompetent TAs. 
>

There are some serious questions here.  When the choice for a grad
student is "teach or pay your own way" it is arguable whether the
student is teaching for or against his/her own will.  

The second serious question is the competence of the TA.  Surely knowing
how to write Pascal programs doesn't make a TA competent to teach
programming to freshmen or any other classes.  Further, the TA is a
transient member of the academic community and is less likely to have to
live with the results of his/her poor or inexperienced than is a
permanent faculty member.  Also, TAs tend to be the more junior grad
students.  Those with more longevity have often gotten themselves into
faculty research projects which support their tuition and stipends.

Finally, the discussion of TA competence must include language skills.
More junior TAs, newly arrived in the United States often speak English
so poorly that they can barely communicate difficult concepts to anxious
undergraduates.  Passing the "Test of Written English" doesn't quite cut
it.  

I'm not saying that every prof is a better, more articulate, more caring
teacher than every TA.  But certainly, those undergraduates who study at
institutions where the faculty teach are, in the main, better off than
those with a battalion of TAs teaching the "hordes."


-- 
Brint Cooper

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