Abhishek Shetty: UCLA should look at undergraduate TAs as short-term fix to TA shortage

The instructed may soon become the instructors.

At least, that’s what UCLA might look like if the UCLA Academic Senate was to take a stronger approach to the campus’ teaching assistants shortage.

It’s no secret the UC is in need of more graduate students. While the undergraduate student population has increased over the past few years, the size of the graduate student body hasn’t kept up. This has resulted in a shortage of teaching assistants for some departments.

To address this shortage, the Senate, a body which sets policies for UCLA’s academics, has considered having undergraduate students serve as TAs. There isn’t much support for this, though, and the Senate may not even go through with the idea.

But undergraduate TAs might be a good temporary solution to UCLA’s TA shortage. The Senate should consider having nontraditional students, especially students that are above the age of 25, serve as TAs. However, the Senate should only consider this as a short-term solution and must simultaneously prioritize long-term solutions such as better marketing toward graduate students and structuring classes to require smaller numbers of TAs per quarter.

To deal with the shortage, TAs from subjects such as engineering are teaching sections for life science. This is an adequate solution for easy classes and sure, graduate students from different departments have already been holding discussion sections.

But this shortage might become more visible, considering the rapid increase in undergraduate admissions at the behest of the California state legislature. Graduate student admissions have not increased at the same rate, however. Such growth seems unlikely, considering increased graduate student enrollment would create a need for additional funds from a state government that is more focused on taking control of the UC.

The Senate is looking at a variety of options to solve this TA shortage problem, but is overlooking the possibility of undergrad TAs. Their concerns seem valid, but can be solved pretty easily.

Senate chair Susan Cochran mentioned two problems with having undergraduate TAs, the first being that undergraduates don’t have the same level of experience as graduate students, resulting in a lower quality of education. The other issue is that undergraduates might bring up potential conflicts of interest when it comes to grading.

This isn’t always the case, though. For example, Divya Sharma, the Academics Affairs commissioner for the Undergraduate Students Association Council, said he wanted to give nontraditional undergraduate students the opportunity to be TAs. After all, some of them may have served as some sort of TA at community college or in a classroom setting, and some even have workforce experience that could be useful for more professionally oriented fields like engineering.

And conflict of interest issues can be solved through blind grading, which would help prevent undergraduate TAs from unfairly favoring certain students. Students would only include their ID numbers on papers instead of their names – a system some professors already utilize.

The Senate should seriously consider having undergraduate TAs to manage the TA shortage. Selection of such students can be based upon whether they’ve taken the class before and whether they have experience teaching in a classroom.

But the Senate shouldn’t view this, or any similar solution, as a substitute for a long-term one. Utilizing undergraduate TAs would give the Senate the time to flesh out a long-term solution. While implementing this, the Senate could come up with a framework for addressing the shortage and strictly maintain that undergraduates can become TAs only for a limited number of years.

Doing otherwise could pose a larger issue to graduate students’ job opportunities, according to Rebecca Katz, the Academic Affairs Vice President for the Graduate Students Association.

If undergraduate TAs started replacing graduate TAs instead of just making up for the difference, that would unfairly cut down the available job opportunities for graduate students in need.

The long-term solutions are there. Better publicizing of the existing TA marketplace and making it easier to apply to positions could help. This is what Katz, who feels that the shortage is more of a marketing issue, wants to implement.

The Senate can also look into dividing large lower division classes into smaller ones and then offering these smaller classes more frequently during the academic year. This would give the same number of students the opportunity to take a particular class in one year, while requiring a smaller number of TAs in any given quarter. Obviously, this would depend on the availability of professors and lecturers, but could be coupled with a relaxed limit on the number of quarters a graduate student can teach.

This depends on the Senate deciding to take action. Right now, it is still looking at its options. Sharma said he feels the Senate hasn’t been proactive enough on the issue. There might be further increases in undergraduate enrollment looming, so it’s important that the Senate sets a framework as soon as possible to deal with the number of TAs over the coming years. Slowly going about the issue right now will only exacerbate the shortage over the next few years.

The Senate need not be apprehensive toward the idea of undergraduate TAs. But it also needs to recognize that having students become teachers isn’t the long-term solution we need.