A shortage of teaching assistants that has hit several large classes across many academic departments may be the result of recent policy changes in the Graduate School, which now guarantees five full years of funding to each grad student and allows individual departments to allocate funds as they please.
The five-year funding guarantee, which was announced in 2006 and took effect this semester, was designed to make the Grad School more competitive with peer institutions. Though funding may be available to some grad students beyond the initial five years, the new policy places an emphasis on reducing graduation time.
As grad students face increased pressure to complete their degrees more quickly, balancing teaching responsibilities and graduate work is proving difficult for many grad students - and large undergraduate classes are feeling the unintended consequences.
Professors teaching some of the University's most popular lecture courses have been forced to either reduce the frequency of section meetings led by grad students or scramble to find more TAs.
Sections in HIST 1740: "Civil War and Reconstruction," which enrolled 151 students this semester, now only meet every other week, and students are asked to watch films online on off-weeks instead of discussing course material.
"With three TAs and 151 students - and a TA in our department is not expected to teach more than two sections - we're talking about large sections," said Associate Professor of History Michael Vorenberg, who teaches the course. "And these are supposed to be discussion sessions."
CHEM 0330: "Equilibrium, Rate and Structure" had such a poor student-to-TA ratio that Professor of Chemistry Peter Weber, who chairs the department, had to convince grad students on research assistantships to teach part-time.
"Chem 33 was 10 to 15 percent larger than usual," Weber said. "I have a small number of full-time TAs and a large number of half-time TAs/half-time RAs, and with that we are able to cover everything."
Though Weber was ultimately able to accommodate all of the students interested in taking CHEM 0330 without reducing section frequency, some worry that professors faced with an ongoing shortage of graduate TAs may be forced to cap the size of popular courses that are currently open-enrollment.
A blessing or a curse?
A move from not guaranteeing funding to providing five full years may seem beneficial to grad students, but the result may be trickier than it first appears. In order to shorten the notoriously long process of earning a Ph.D. - it takes American students an average of 8.2 years, according to a recent National Science Foundation study - students received, in addition to their checks, the message that they should graduate in a timely fashion. With many trying to complete their degrees a year or two faster than they might otherwise have, some grad students are finding it difficult to devote as much time to teaching.
"I'm in an almost perverse situation where I have to say, 'Wow, five years,' and at the same time, 'Only five years?' " said Professor of History Joan Richards, who is the graduate adviser for her department. "No matter where you are, it often takes more than five years to get a Ph.D. in history. A dissertation in history takes time to ripen."
Richards said one consequence of the new guarantee is that a rising fifth-year grad student may be placed in an awkward situation. If the department assigns the student to TA a course, the student would be unlikely to complete a dissertation that year and may not be funded for a sixth year. On the other hand, if the department grants the fifth-year student a dissertation fellowship - allowing the student to devote all of his or her time to scholarship - then graduation would be more likely, but the student would have missed out on a potentially valuable teaching experience - and the College would lose a TA.
"If I see the choice as being that they can TA in their fifth year and possibly get cut off without a cent, I'm not going to make them TA," Richards said. "My graduate students are my primary commitment."
Gabe Rosenberg GS, a fifth-year grad student in history and one of Vorenberg's TAs in HIST 1740, agreed.
"The Graduate School's insistence on only funding people for five years means there is a pool of individuals who have to choose between teaching and finishing their degrees, so there just can't be enough TAs," he said. "I'm busier this semester than I have ever been."
Rosenberg emphasized that while grateful for the Grad School's generosity in guaranteeing five years of funding, he feels some interests are not being considered.
"I'm very happy that the Graduate School is trying to make sure everyone is funded - I think that's a wonderful goal," he said. "But the heavier the teaching load, the harder it is for us to complete our degrees, and it also means we have less time for our own scholarship."
However, Dean of the Graduate School Sheila Bonde told The Herald the Grad School does not insist on a maximum of five years of funding. As both Bonde and Richards pointed out, all of last year's requests for sixth-year funding were granted.
"We want students to finish in a timely fashion," Bonde said. "But we recognize that certain projects and fields may not permit that to happen."
But Bonde and Richards also agreed that current late-stage grad students might feel more pressure than incoming grad students, who haven't had to deal with a changing system.
"All current graduate students have been grandfathered into the new policy," Bonde said. "The pressure on them might have been keener than for the graduate students who just entered, since it was a new system."
A blanket policy with a variety of effects
Though the new five-year guarantee applies to every incoming grad student in every discipline, departments have felt the effects of the new policy differently. Now that the Grad School's financial commitment has increased, University officials have been careful not to over-enroll students - an unexpected increase in the Grad School's yield would cost millions of dollars. To avoid such a costly situation and to counterbalance the large incoming classes of the last few years, Grad School officials slightly lowered the matriculation targets of the entire school, resulting in 23 fewer incoming students this year.
Though most first-year graduate students don't teach, the Department of Chemistry is a notable exception, and the department suffered a TA crisis when enrollment in CHEM 0330 was much higher than usual.
"Chemistry is a little unusual because our first year graduate students do TA," Weber said. "The budget for our teaching assistants remained constant; however, the number of offers the department was able to send was reduced by about 30 percent. That then led to a very small incoming class, which led to our problem with TAs."
In order to solve the problem, Weber worked with Bonde to create a split RA/TA fellowship, allowing some grad students to spend some of their time conducting research and some of their time teaching.
But for the students under the joint fellowships, the consequences may be more severe than just delaying graduation. Most research funding in the sciences comes from external grants that can't simply be diverted to teaching assistantships.
"If grant-supported research does not get done or gets done on a slower schedule, that harms our ability to secure future funding," Weber said.
No easy solution
The TA shortage is somewhat of a misnomer. Despite a lack of TAs in certain large classes, the overall number of TA appointments actually increased from Fall 2006 to Fall 2007 by 11 percent. The problem, according to Bonde, is in the distribution.
"It's partly a result of choices that the departments made in allocating fellowship support and designing courses of a particular size," Bonde said. "Moving to a system of five years of guaranteed support takes time for everyone to understand, as it took time for our budget to metabolize."
Vorenberg said he doesn't think the blame should be put squarely on the departments.
"If the Graduate School's motive, as stated, is to make our graduate program competitive with our peer institutions, then not only must the financial package be the same - which they have made it, and for which we are grateful - but also, our second-year students must not be asked to teach," Vorenberg said. "The number of TAs that Dean Bonde gives now is accurate, but it is a distortion to say that that number is likely to remain the same in years to come, if we are indeed to make our graduate program competitive with those of our peer institutions."
With so many interests needing to be adequately considered, it may prove difficult to solve the TA problem. Every potential solution has its drawback.
Admitting more grad students could strengthen the Grad School and allow for more TAs, but that move could also saturate the job market for Ph.D.s and ultimately do grad students a disservice.
Hiring part-time section leaders and lecturers may lessen the grad students' teaching responsibilities but could rob them of valuable experiences and may also dilute the high-caliber faculty at Brown.
Increasing the Grad School's funding guarantee to six or seven years might ease the pressure on grad students and give them more time to teach, but - like all of these solutions - it begs the question of how to procure the funds.
Consequences for the College
"The simplest, most effective and least expensive way to solve it is for an increasing number of professors to cap their courses to avoid the situation that I am currently in," Vorenberg said. "All signs point to me never teaching a class of this size again - in fact, never a class larger than 50. It is very hard to see who is well-served by my teaching large history classes."
While Vorenberg's might be the most pragmatic solution, its necessary consequence would be fewer spots for undergraduates in some highly sought-after courses. Vorenberg said he and other professors might have to use Banner's course restriction capabilities to filter the pool of students by seniority and concentration, potentially preventing underclassmen from taking popular lecture courses.
But not all large lecture courses would be affected. Popular introductory classes like NEUR 0010: "The Brain: An Introduction to Neuroscience" and ECON 0110: "Principles of Economics," which enroll hundreds of students and use undergraduate TAs to lead sections, would be immune from the change.
Still, the prospect of dramatically restricting classes that rely on graduate TAs may be worrisome to undergraduates.
"You cannot do what they are trying to do - which is to increase the prestige of the Graduate School - on the cheap, unless you sacrifice to some extent undergraduate education," Vorenberg said.
Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron, who is part of a working group led by Bonde that is tackling these questions, said she recognized the risk to the College, but she said she may be willing to accept it.
"I'm not utterly opposed to what might be called 'sensible enrollment management,' " Bergeron said.
Bonde, a professor of history of art and architecture, said the situation is delicate, but that all interests are being considered.
"No system is perfect," she said. "We're looking very carefully at what is best for the curriculum as a whole."
