The Teaching Crunch

When the Faculty Council this week discussed options for alleviating the current shortage of teaching staff for sections and tutorials, it opened up an issue that affects not only undergraduates, but their counterparts in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) as well.

Declining enrollment in the GSAS and the increased size of the College over the last decade have left fewer people available to teach a greater number of sections and tutorials.

One option the council considered for creating a larger pool of eligible teaching staff was reducing restrictions on the number of years graduate students can teach. GSAS rules prohibit students from teaching more than four years.

David D. Perkins '51, chairman of the English Department and a member of the council, said this week he favors allowing graduate students to teach during the year in which they plan to finish their dissertations if their advisers agree that to do so would not delay completion of their doctoral programs.

But most members of the council opposed increasing the amount of time graduate students can teach: many graduate students don't like the idea much either.

Michael Moynihan, chairman of the GSAS student council, said yesterday "it wouldn't be wise" to remove teaching restrictions because "there's a tendency for Faculty to take advantage of graduate students."

The Committee on Graduate Education recently rejected any attempt to increase the amount of time graduate students can teach "as being deleterious to gaining an education," Richard Kraus, associate dean of the GSAS, said yesterday.