Same System, Other School

As Harvard reviews its program for teaching fellows and sections, Yale is following much the same course.

The university formed the Ad-Hoc Committee on Teaching this past fall to examine the effectiveness of sections there.

Like Harvard, Yale relies mainly on graduate students to staff its sections, and Yale also has no pre-registration.

Patricia Pierce, dean of academic life, says difficulties in getting qualified teaching fellows do not justify drastic measures such as course caps and pre-registration.

"The problem hasn't been that bad here, involving only a few courses, and when you compare it with the major problems associated with requiring pre-registration or the outcry that would be expressed if we limited enrollment in large lecture courses, it just doesn't seem worth it," she says.

"Our solution has been to try to make sure that people we've had to draw from different departments are good teachers," Pierce adds.

The impetus for creating the ad-hoc committee was to respond to financial problems faced by graduate students. But Jules Prown, who heads the committee, says its primary objective has been to review "our teaching fellow program's impact on undergraduates."

"Some of the things we've been looking at are the undergraduate perception of TFs, whether or not there are vast differences in the way sections are taught in the math and sciences versus the humanities and whether any inequities exist in the quality of teaching and in grading," Prown says.

Prown also says the committee is considering what to do with TFs whose first language is not English.

"The structure here at Yale is that people [graduate students] are on stipends, and they're obligated to teach," he says. "The financial aid program is set up so that graduate students are assured the opportunity to teach, and we run into some problems with the foreign students."

Prown's committee will release a formal report later this month.