If you object to the amount of university teaching that is currently being done by graduate students and part-time adjunct instructors--and even if you don't--here's a new one to chew on: The Michigan Daily reports that more and more undergraduates are being hired to teach in undergraduate courses. They are cheap, plentiful, and they aren't unionized the way UM grad students are--so they can be exploited with relative impunity. The piece is light on detail because it is an editorial that takes for granted readers' awareness of the situation--but it is in some ways all the more damning for that fact. Check it out and meditate on the direction higher education is taking. But don't be too hard on UM: surely hiring undergrads to teach college courses enhances the diversity of the University's professoriate, which has hitherto been dominated by people with actual degrees. And we all know how important diversity is to the University of Michigan.

Of course, there are those of us holdouts who still think it's wrong to use graduate students as a substitute for professors. One of the great things about moving past my freshman year at the University of Michigan was actually getting to take a number of classes where I stood a chance of exchanging words (a question, at the least) with the professor.

I think the low point for me was the TA who, though quite brilliant in his subject matter (from what I hear), was still working on his English and therefore had some diffilculty communicating with the class.

This, however, is a new low. I'm sendin' my kids to a small liberal arts college where the emphasis is on undergraduate teaching, not on the graduate programs and faculty research.

Follow the Money

If U of M isnít spending its money on professors, what is it spending its money on?

A quick glance at the financial report shows that the university, exclusive of its hospitals, has an operating budget of about $2 Billion a year. Enrollment is nearly 53,000 students, both undergraduate and graduate. That works out to nearly $39,000 per student. What on earth are they spending the money on?

By the way, when looking for the financial report, I found the Financial Diversity Committee long before I found the financial report.

Undergrads have been "helping" instruct classes here (including chemistry labs) for as long as I've been here (6 years).

It's just another way for the Universities to avoid hiring professors. They'll hire administrators (the Dean of students at the non-existent--still under construction--is costing CA taxpayers $182,000/year), but god forbid they hire a real professor to teach someone something.

David

Erg. I left out details from that post.

"here" is the UC-Berkeley.
The non-existent CAMPUS is the UC-Merced.

I'm literate--really--I know who both my parents are;)

This is genuinely frightening. In many ways I was barely qualified to handle a classroom setting after two years of graduate work. When I was an undergraduate I probably would have done more harm than good as an instructional aide.

I can't wait until the the administration at Yale finds out about this. And I thought they were cutting corners by hiring law students with no graduate training in literature to teach English sections...