Word: tfs
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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What would a week without Teaching Fellows (TFs) be like? We no longer have to wonder—all we have to do is ask our peers at Columbia and Yale, where non-science graduate teaching assistants are on strike this week fighting for their right to unionize. While we sympathize with the demands of graduate students at these schools, we feel that unionization is not the best way to solve the problems inherent in the current system for both undergraduates and graduate students. Instead, universities should proactively enact changes to improve the way TFs are paid and the responsibilities...
...creation of a union would no doubt address the grievances of graduate students at Yale and Columbia. A union could advocate on behalf of TFs to an unprecedented extent. Additionally, the university-wide common pay scales that the graduate student organizations are calling for would be a marked improvement over flat payment schemes that are currently used, which give TFs little incentive to improve or invest more time in their teaching. Unionization could also fix financial aid for graduate students, the terms of which in many instances require them to teach sections. No undergraduate should have to endure a section...
These advantages aside, a union is no panacea. From an undergraduate’s perspective, unions could hold many downsides. A standardized pay scale could encourage TFs to increase the amount of hours they work by taking over responsibilities from professors, leading to the institutionalization of graduate-student teaching and the expansion of the role of the TF in the classroom. It also might encourage graduate students to work on more classes, spreading their resources too thin and leaving undergraduates neglected. Also, despite what graduate students are saying in their push for unions, it is likely that any union would...
Government 1780, International Political Economy. If you can stand a dose of hard grading, this class will teach you more about globalization than, well, Globalization. Stanfield Professor of International Peace Jeffry Frieden and truly excellent TFs provide four, count ’em, four theoretical approaches to understanding the interaction between politics and economics on a global scale. What I really loved about this class is that you didn’t need a strong background in math or economics to take it, but students still read contemporary scholarship, not a Readers’ Digest-like summary...
...other people talking in section; it takes the pressure off of me. What’s unforgivable about these über-students is how blatantly rude they are—often directly (and needlessly) challenging the TF’s every word. Hostility toward TFs is not uncommon, but I’d venture that it has never manifested itself so openly before. This is pure viciousness, barely reigned in and often resulting in two or three zealous students backing the TF into a corner, flustered and inarticulate. I’ve had my share of inept, over-enthusiastic...