So, a vote at NYU. Grad students fight their oppressors.
Except....grad students actually do very little of the grading. VERY. LITTLE. of the grading, in most undergraduate classes. It's just a myth.
Grad students are getting paid to learn. And they are getting paid a lot. Very few work ten hours a week on class stuff for undergrads, at least at Duke.
Don't get me wrong, I value my TAs very much. And this semester I had four, and they graded all the papers for my classes.
But I graded the midterms and finals. My TAs didn't. It wouldn't be fair to ask them to do all that. So for the last three days I have been grading 700 essay questions for exams from 300 students. If the TAs were cut I would cut the papers, and the class would suffer. The students get a lot from having smart TAs work with them on the papers. But I would do all the grading of exams either way.
Except....grad students actually do very little of the grading. VERY. LITTLE. of the grading, in most undergraduate classes. It's just a myth.
Grad students are getting paid to learn. And they are getting paid a lot. Very few work ten hours a week on class stuff for undergrads, at least at Duke.
Don't get me wrong, I value my TAs very much. And this semester I had four, and they graded all the papers for my classes.
But I graded the midterms and finals. My TAs didn't. It wouldn't be fair to ask them to do all that. So for the last three days I have been grading 700 essay questions for exams from 300 students. If the TAs were cut I would cut the papers, and the class would suffer. The students get a lot from having smart TAs work with them on the papers. But I would do all the grading of exams either way.
6 comments:
Is that common at Duke, that the professors grade the exams? I did an econ Ph.D. at Northwestern, and I can assure you I graded a hell of a lot of finals and midterms in undergraduate classes.
(I agree with you about the larger point, which is that my hourly rate for real work was not bad.)
At Cornell, it was certainly the case that grad students graded the midterms and exams for undergrad classes. They also taught sections.
I recall, while at the LSE back in 1981, that the TA's complained that though 'downward rigidity' was the dogma they were expected to teach, nevertheless, it didn't apply.
Still, the underlying Credentialist Ponzi scheme- (whereby, for example, you don't know Econ, Pol Sci ad have actually forgotten or don't use the Math which gave you a place at the table- can't crash coz it just imports every type of rent-seeking under the sun.
BTW, Victorian and then Gandhian India was more 'Libertarian' than anywhere else.
But it was fucked in the head sex-wise. Apparently, having sex emasculates you coz... urm... dunno.. but Hitler was a real good Fuehrer coz he never had a g.f. or some such shite
This is'nt why Amartya Sen says really stupid things about the 'Gita'- he says stupid things about everything but get's away with it coz the Literate think he might be doing Math and the Math guys think he is literate.
Anyway, just finished watching 'Orange is the new black'- it's good, very good in the sense of making a Shutzian analysis of all possible Liber al-or-tarian positions and then Mungerfisting them so badly they cayent get married to their True Love coz the underlying orifice is just too fucking capacious.
BTW do you approve of me being banned from BHL just for showing Jason Brennan is shite and doesn't know from Argumentation theory.
You know Lob's theorem.
Why are you polite to a fuckwit like him? Does he amuse you?
When I was getting an MSc in Computer Science at UNC in the late 1970s, I taught a section of the intro programming course. I was expected to write and grade all the tests as well as give final grades. We didn't even share tests between sections.
Don't you recall your time at UNC, where many grad students had sole responsibility for their classes?
When I was a TA at UNC there was only 1 professor who actually graded the midterm and final - every other course I TA'd grading, office hours, and response to students was my responsibility. In some, I had responsibility to 'guest lecture' as well.
While I did not like the one professor, I respected them for providing the educational experience the students deserved.
Then I instructed my own courses which was awesome, but I was intentional about the assignments I gave and the amount of time it would take to grade.
Post a Comment