THE NUMBER of applicants to the University plummeted this year because people talk. They talk to their sisters, brothers, cousins and friends. They talk about affirmative action and honor, but mostly they talk about class size, teaching assistants and faculty interaction. They are talking about the reduced quality of education at the University. And they don't like what they are hearing.
The College of Arts and Sciences, where the University educates most of its students, is spending less on faculty salaries. According to the University Budget, College faculty spending has decreased since last year. The biggest losers are among the most popular majors, including economics, English and psychology. Some of the reductions are due to retirements or faculty leaving for higher-paying jobs. The problem is the University's response to these departures. It is hiring more graduate teaching assistants. T.A. spending is way up, and, not surprisingly, the very same economics, English and psychology departments have some of the greatest increases. According to U.S. News and World Report, last year 20 percent of the University's classes were taught by teaching assistants, compared with zero at our archrival, The University of California at Berkeley.
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Saving money is the primary purpose behind the shift from faculty to teaching assistants. Take for example any large humanities class. There are usually a professor and three T.A.'s. Assuming the professor makes the minimum $45,000, and the T.A.'s get their usual $5,000 each, it costs $60,000 to educate 180 to 200 students. If you get rid of the professor and instead have each T.A. teach a 40 person section -- the College's maximum class size for non-Ph.D T.A.'s -- it costs only $20,000 to educate the same 200 students. That's $40,000 in savings. If the retiring professor had tenure or a chaired position, the savings increase dramatically.
As professors retire or quit, it's vastly cheaper to hire graduate students. They will work for peanuts, get no benefits, have no egos, and the undergraduates still get taught. The salary line from the retiring professor is allocated to something else. It's a great lesson in pure capitalist theory. And it comes at the expense of the quality of education at the University. Undergraduates pay for full professors, but get glorified graders instead.
Where does the saved money go? First and foremost it goes to hire new administrators. Just this year Melvyn Leffer, the Dean of the College, hired a handful of new academic deans. These are the failed academics whose only contact with students comes when they hand out academic suspensions or when ISIS makes a mistake. It is worth repeating that since 1990 the University has hired an additional 311 administrators, almost the same number by which they increased incoming class size.
The money also goes to recruit a small number of "big name" professors. These are the successful academics who have written more articles, have bigger egos, and must be compensated accordingly. The fact that they will only teach one or two classes, mainly graduate seminars, is not a problem. The University will hire additional T.A.'s at little cost to pick up the slack. It is research and writing that brings the University prestige, not student evaluations.
The Dean and the President of the Faculty Senate assure us that teaching is a key priority. They trot out University guidelines that say teaching must be considered in tenure decisions. They point to these guidelines like the Ten Commandments, as if just because it is written down somewhere it actually comes to pass. Well, the road signs say 55 mph, but how many people listen?
The undeniable fact is that from 400-level seminars in the history department to just about every class in the economics department, graduate students are doing an increased share of the teaching. The effects of this trend are felt by every student who can't get a recommendation from a faculty member because he hasn't been taught by one. They are felt by every student who has a 25 year-old kid teaching her instead of a faculty member with a lifetime of experience and knowledge.
And the University has the nerve to raise the application fee. For what?
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