Grad Student Instructors Strike @ UI

[EasyESmall]

Good post, Downstate.

I live in the C-U area.  I graduated from the U of I in the late 80's.  Then, I was often not impressed with the grad students who were teaching the classes.  I didn't have a frame of reference to compare them to, but I felt for the money I was paying, I could have been getting better.

I think Parkland is a diamond in the rough and has been for years.  I had taken a good handful of classes out there over the years and was quite pleased with them.  Most of those classes were also taught by folks who taught at the U of I.

When it comes to college time for my kids, my plan is to put them through 2 years of college at Parkland.  Three reasons - cost savings, easier to transfer to U of I than trying to get in out of H.S. unless my kids end up to be phenomenal students, and the U of I works well together with Parkland, ensuring nearly all if not all classes will transfer and count towards U of I.

[downstateil]

My first impulse was to say that an increase in funding for grad students should result in better grad student instructors, but as always, things aren't that simple. Up to a point that's true - as I said above, good grad students (in certain fields) won't come with no funding, and if you paid insanely high funding, you'd probably get top grad students too, but what about reasonable funding - does more money equal better grad student instructors? In general I would say "no." What's most important for grad students is what professors there are to work with. A couple thousand extra dollars a year isn't going to beat out having respected professors in the specific field the grad student wants to study.

I can't speak for all grad student instructors either, of course. I'm sure some departments have first years that teach full classes which can be rough, but I think generally that happens with classes that have less lecturing (e.g. a speech class where a lot of the time is given to students giving speeches). Also, I know my department is a top 50 grad department, but not every department is that way. I'm sure the ECE grad program is much better than mine, but I'm sure some are lower ranked too.