tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3571309.post111160771862553106..comments2023-10-31T07:32:11.739-04:00Comments on Wormtalk and Slugspeak: Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07566889846240013567noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3571309.post-1112423413614941182005-04-02T01:30:00.000-05:002005-04-02T01:30:00.000-05:00I have to agree with Natalia to some extent. I'm ...I have to agree with Natalia to some extent. I'm an undergraduate at UC Irvine, and most of my lower-division courses are taught by graduate students or have a graduate student handling discussions. I don't think that without graduate students the professors I've had would falter -- they're incredibly capable individuals and I've had some who have foregone graduate students for whatever reasons -- but I think the ability to deal with the sheer volume of people going through programs today would be diminished. This makes me wonder, if this overproduction of PhD's was reduced by limiting graduate classes further, how the overabundance of students in classes would be handled. The only way I can see to do it would be to price education beyond the means of the average middle-class person to attain. Which, some could argue, is happening already but I think a policy of deliberately removing the spear carriers from the play, if you will, would only exacerbate it.MDhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14584009864750017644noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3571309.post-1111694404904954602005-03-24T15:00:00.000-05:002005-03-24T15:00:00.000-05:00A view from a large public university:This is not ...A view from a large public university:<BR/><BR/>This is not the case at all schools, but at my institution, UC Berkeley, undergraduate education completely depends on graduate student teaching. All of the introductory reading and composition classes are taught by graduate students, and although professors teach the upper-level classes, all of them except for the junior and senior seminars (open only to English majors and often overfull) are large lecture classes. In a very few cases the students get discussion sections, led by graduate students (never by professors). In most cases there is no discussion at all, but graduate students are employed to grade the papers. There is in fact a shortage of graduate students to teach all the discussion sections that our department needs. Of course, there is also a shortage of funding to pay those graduate students, so this situation will not change regardless of how many graduate students we admit. <BR/><BR/>I think the argument that professors' salaries depend on exploited graduate student labor is tenuous at best (we are unionized!), but it's absolutely true that the department would not be able to accomodate the volume of undergraduates that it does without the (cheap) labor of graduate students.Nataliahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07898457401179147102noreply@blogger.com