When Does it Pay to Be a TA?

It's no secret that year after year, the most notorious guts are among the most popular classes offered at Harvard.

But what undergraduates don't know is that while they cram into lecture halls to snooze through "Heroes for Zeros" and cruise through "Jesus and the Easy Life," their prospective teaching assistants are running in the opposite direction.

"As a rule people prefer to teach courses students are serious about," says Nancy F. Bauer '82, a teaching assistant in the Philosophy Department. "A gut can be worse in some ways than other courses...you have the same amount of work, but it's worse work."

While guts may be easier for undergraduates, many teaching assistants say they are more difficult than other courses to teach.

"Overall a TF would be disappointed if it was something they took seriously and students were just there for an 'easy A,'" says Anita H. Goldman '83, a graduate student in the English department who has led sections for four years.

In fact, Bauer says, the courses most popular among section leaders are those that challenge them--and their students. Bauer, who taught Moral Reasoning 34: "Moral Perfectionism" last year, calls that class "a good example of a course people really like to teach...it's a really challenging course both to teach for and to be a student for."

Veteran graduate students are loathe to single out individual courses as particularly unpleasant or difficult to teach. But one course which is the target of frequent gripes is Social Analysis 10--Ec 10, Harvard's infamous introductory economics course.

Although the course pays teaching assistants the highest possible salary per semester, the workload is notoriously heavy because the bulk of the teaching is done in section.

Ec 10 pays junior level teaching assistants, graduate students who have completed two years of graduate study and passed their General Exams, $4433 per semester. Science courses, on the other hand, pay $3325, and all classes which have only one section per week pay $2660.

But Ec 10 section leaders say that teaching that introductory course is more work and pays less than teaching two other economics classes. Although those classes pay less individually, combined they net a young scholar $5320.

And the difference is even greater for senior level teaching assistants, who earn almost $500 more each semester than their junior level counterparts.

"To say that the money is really distributed fairly is probably not true," says Ec 10 teaching assistant Dave C. Yermack '85. "For the grad students, if you understand the system you can kind of act strategically. Some deals are going to be very attractive in terms of how much time is going to be spent."

Not Unnoticed

Ec 10's burdensome time committment and tough reputation has not gone unnoticed.

"We worry about how desireable it is to teach Ec 10 compared to other economics courses," says Assistant Professor of Economics Douglas W. Elmendorf.

According to Elmendorf, some professors try to find ways to boost the pay assigned to their departments in order to make their courses more attractive to graduate students. Especially when it comes to classes in the core curriculum, he says, "there is a fair amount of competition."

But fourth-year graduate student Gerald D. Cohen, who taught Ec 10 for the first time last year, points to the "intangibles" that made his job worthwhile and outweighed the negatives.

"It was a lot of work," Cohen admits. But, he adds, "I really enjoyed teaching...People go into 'Ec 10' knowing that you could make more money for doing less work."

What Popular Classes Pay

A list of the 10 most popular Harvard classes by enrollment in September 1990 and what they pay teaching assistants per semester. To attain status as a senior section leader requires at least two years of graduate study and successful completion of General Examinations. Class  Junior  Senior Social Analysis 10  $4433  $5017 Lit. & Arts A-40b  $2660  $3010 Lit. & Arts C-37  $2660  $3010 Hist. Studies A-12  $2660  $3010 Science B-29  $3325  $3763 Moral Reasoning 30  $2660  $3010 History 1690b  $2660  $3010 Moral Reasoning 38  $2660  $3010 History 1653  $2660  $3010 Biology 1  $3325  $3763 Source: Core Office and Social Analysis 10 Office