Teaching Fellows Should Not Be Doing the Teaching

The discontent that Harvard undergraduates feel with the quality of graduate Teaching Fellows ("Teaching the Teaching Fellows," March 9, 1994) is badly misplaced. It should be no surprise to undergraduates that the TFs who lead section and supervise labs often have a weaker grasp on the material presented than the professors who teach the class. Certainly it is no surprise to the TFs, most of whom were undergraduates themselves not too long ago. What is a surprise is that students who pay (or rather, whose parents pay) almost $25,000 a year for an education are willing to accept such a system.

It seems to be the rule that large research universities put a large amount of the teaching burden on graduate students. There are strong financial incentives for them to act this way--why should Harvard or Berkeley employ more faculty members at salaries in excess of $50,000 a year when they have a pool of graduate students who are willing to work for one-fifth of that amount? Many professors would rather do research than teach undergraduates especially since tenure decisions are based substantially more on research and publications that on time in the class room. The incentives become irresistible when students and their parents quietly acquiesce, or at most complain that the TFs need to be proficient in English and coherently express their ideas and the material they teach--standards, it should be noted, which professors occasionally fail to satisfy.

Of course, if Harvard TFs were trained at a very high level, with broad comprehension of the material and an ability to clearly communicate it to undergraduates, then the jobs of many faculty members would be severely jeopardized. Why should the parents of undergraduates pay for professors to spend their time researching, administrating and attending conferences if the graduate students are just as capable of teaching classes? If TFs are too good, then professors become redundant. Disregarding the possibility that a very successful "Profscam" has been pulled on the undergraduate population, the obvious answer is that TFs are really "teaching assistants" who do not have, and are not expected to have, as much knowledge about a subject as a full-time professor. Being a TF prepares graduate students for that far-off day when they will become professors; in a sense, undergraduates are the guinea pigs for the teaching techniques of rookie teachers.

It does not need to be this way. Schools like Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore, Pomona, Willamette, Carleton and a host of other small liberal arts colleges seem to manage quite well without any TFs at all. They have small classes and professors who are available at almost any time without an appointment. Harvard, which claims to offer a "liberal arts" education, somehow seems unable to perform the same task while charging the same amount of money. It seems strange to argue that the education given to Harvard students by large lecture classes and an army of TFs can be comparable to that received by students who have constant, quality access to real professors both in class and outside.

Harvard certainly has not fallen to the state of some of this nation's monster universities. It has some very innovative and beneficial programs, such as the junior seminars, which put students into contact with professors. However, the broader problem still exists: too little faculty time spent teaching.

As a research university, Harvard does have a commitment to research. But the reason this university was founded was not to conduct research, although that is a happy side benefit, but to educate students. Research has its place in ensuring that professors stay current on the latest trends in their disciplines and contribute to the expansion of human knowledge, but the primary mission of a university remains its duty to its students.

People who are operated on do not want to have most of the procedure done by interns. Likewise, students should be taught by teachers, not teaching assistants--or "Teaching Fellows" as some places euphemistically label them. At the moment it appears that Harvard students are relatively content with this expensive system as long as their TFs speak English and have a grasp of the material. It also leads one to suspect that the $25,000 a year for a "Harvard education" places more emphasis on the "Harvard" than it does on the "education". Mark E. Duckenfield   Department of Government