Princeton is renowned as a research university that is also committed to educating undergraduates. The University demonstrates this commitment by requiring all professors to teach and partially basing tenure decisions on teaching ability. Graduate students also play a vital and ...(back to the article)
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[Princeton is a renowned research university committed to educating undergraduates and graduate students. The University demonstrates this commitment by requiring all professors to teach—partially basing tenure decisions on teaching ability.] ¶ “Digital Publishing Concepts in the 21th Century” doesn't seem to be a core requirement at the Freshman undergraduate level. This may sound a little bit...too Karen Gordan, but you should have learned by now to make every sentence that you type stand out and scream, "read on, this is interesting." A good thesis statement surrounded by incoherent sentences and bad punctuation is an iceberg waiting to sink an oil tanker off the coast of Siberia.
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Also, another factor that most commenters haven't touched upon (even though it was mentioned in the article) is the issue of preceptors in quantitative fields vs. those in qualitative fields. I'm a humanities/social sciences student, and I haven't really had any god-awful preceptors (some mediocre ones, yes, but no truly horrible ones). On the other hand, I've heard numberous horror stories from many of my engineering and pre-med friends about confusing preceptors, unhelpful lab TAs, etc. Granted, this is all just anecdotal experience, but I wonder the extent to which the problems discussed in the article are concentration-specific...
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Re: Undergrad. "We were expected to come to class prepared, and most students did, especially considering that your grade would decrease if you weren't active in discussions." Isn't that what happens here (at least, in so much as a good portion of the grading for most classes takes into account precept participation)? As for the issue of uninterested students, it works both ways. I've had precepts where most of the students just did not care to contribute to precept discussions (even though the preceptor was very helpful and engaging). On the other hand, I've had precepts where the students were very enthusiastic about the subject matter (even if the preceptor was fairly mediocre).
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One of the comments mentioned the responsibility students have to prepare for precepts. I spent four years at a certain boarding school where every single class was a precept, around a large round table, and the teachers, on the whole, talked very little in class. Actually, the worst classes were normally ones where the teachers talked too much. We were expected to come to class prepared, and most students did, especially considering that your grade would decrease if you weren't active in discussions. If we could do this as fifteen year olds I see no reason why Princeton students can't, at least in the humanities. I have had few good precepts in my two years here, some incredible seminars. I have met a number of excellent graduate students but few truly engaged undergraduates.
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In his comment, Ken Schwartz tries to clarify that the 'editorial was not intended to be an analysis of the precept system as a whole.' Sure, but the editorial does aspire to improve the precept system as a whole ("The University, graduate students and undergraduate students can all benefit from an improved precept system. The preceptors will leave Princeton with solid teaching experience that will aid them in their careers. Their students will better understand course material.") and it's therefore perfectly appropriate for us to comment on the precept system 'as a whole' and in particular on the shared responsibility of undergraduates to make it work. (I doubt that Ken Schwartz is interested in our teaching abilities per se; he's primarily concerned in the pay-off for undergraduates.)
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Thanks to all for the constructive comments. The board is glad that our editorial has sparked extensive discussion. We will certainly take a look at some of the issues that you all have raised. One note of clarification: This editorial was not intended to be an analysis of the precept system as a whole or a complete discussion of how to make precepts better; the editorial is about making preceptors better teachers. Many of you have noted that the University administration and undergraduates may not create the incentive for graduate students to fully invest themselves in precepting. The board believes this is an important consideration and touched on the issue in the editorial. "The University and departments could also create more positive incentives - more pay and preference for housing, for instance - to reward excellent preceptors." The board is very interested in exploring further the concerns of both students and preceptors. We appreciate your feedback and encourage you to write to use with any constructive comments you may have.
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I'm a veteran preceptor, and I've had nothing but positive experiences in my sections. I really do not think that this is as much of an issue as the Prince editors want to make of this. That having been said, I really don't think the suggestions offered here are the best ways to go. A better approach might be, as one previous writer noted, to look at the incentive structures in place to get preceptors to spend more time invested in teaching, as well as getting more meaningful and constructive feedback from students (and I don't mean teaching evaluation forms). It would be useful to have some system in place from students to find out what works and what doesn't work in precept settings, and then try to have preceptors adopt those into their teaching practices. Can I say also that, if any party is really to blame for the quality of teaching at Princeton, it is the core faculty in each department which really sets the priorities. As others have pointed out here, Princeton's top priority is research and production of scholarship. Whatever may be said in the glossy PR propaganda about Princeton's "dedication" to undergraduate teaching, the truth is that Princeton needs to compete with the Stanfords, Michigans, Berkeleys, and Harvards. As long as that is the case, Princeton's teaching will be just like any big research university. But really, how bad is it? I hardly think there's some crisis in the teaching system at Princeton. We're doing just fine.
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haha ok off to houseparties BUT based on what the grad students are saying, we should either increase pay and demand better preparation, or come to class more prepared. i wasn't trying to condemn anyone (!) and i think that, if anything, telling us about your salaries actually makes the case stronger that it is the undergrads' burden to make sure precept goes better. btw, as an undergrad, i would much rather money go to preceptors as an incentive for better precepts rather than to stupid campus events like some lame concerts. btw, as for correcting the "whose," i just wanted to make sure that no snarky poster would have the opportunity to make the "he can't spell, he's therefore stupid" argument.
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when i precept, which is NOT required for me but an option (i enjoy the teaching, usually, and like getting the experience) i make about $100-150 more per month than if I don't teach, and I spend about 20hrs at minimum on teaching each week (lecutre time, precept time, plus preparation) -- so i get compensated about $2/hour. my real compensation, of course, comes from the experience I gain and those wonderful moments when dicussion goes really well or when i can help a student on a paper. but this requires equal motivation from the students' side, a point that is left out of the editorial.
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I wrote "their" instead of "they're" not because I made a typo but because I wanted to have a parallel between my posts and John's. :)
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@John: At least for preceptors in Engineering, they are paid nothing to teach. Instead, their professors/departments/funding agencies don't have to pay for their upkeep so long as their teaching. So the money that preceptors take home at the end of the month doesn't always go up (sometimes it even goes down!), plus they're expected to fulfil their full-time research responsibilities in addition to teaching (which their boss, the professor, doesn't usually care about). In short, the university is paying for the teaching to be done, but the grad students don't, in practice, see that money. And the money that grad students do see is in their paychecks, like the previous poster said, not what motivates them. (It could be different in other departments.)
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Preceptors at Princeton are paid roughly the starting salary of an elementary school teacher......in Alabama. That's the motivation - expect results on par with that.
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gah, I meant to write "whose"
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Can anyone tell me how much graduate students get paid for teaching precepts? If they are getting paid to teach, then I absolutely think it is OK to put pressure on them to give better precepts--as someone who's major requires both humanities and math courses, I've found that my quant preceptors are generally terrible. It is not just their skills in English (though that is a problem) but it is just the general lack of preparation--not having solutions to many problems that they do on the board, not answering questions properly. Why must the "two-way street" have equal-sized lanes if one group is getting paid to conduct a precept?
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I have a problem/confused with how this editorial treats the problem of "language barriers." Are you suggesting that international graduate students who have thick accents and are still working on their English speaking skills should NOT teach? No teaching course is going to help their language abilities, which I think all non-English speaking graduate students would like to do. In fact, maybe having them teach precepts and fully immersing them in challenging english-speaking environments are the best approaches. But wait, undergrads feel like their time is being wasted.
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I think that both undergrads and grads are wrongly blaming each other. While both share a lot of responsibility for less than stellar precepts, I think the bigger problem is the culture clash. Undergrads expect the preceptors to devote themselves to the class, but there is little incentive for the preceptor to do so. Professors still demand full-time research from the preceptor, the preceptor doesn't get any extra recognition or reward for teaching well (in fact, I've seen people get chewed out for spending too much time on a course), and yes, sometimes the students can be trying. Frankly, Princeton has great resources for people who want to be good preceptors or improve their English, but there is no incentive for them to use those resources. The proposals here are fine and dandy, but how about giving preceptors a reason to use the resources already available?
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I meant diatribe, not tirade, oops.
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I think I was pretty clear about what bothered me: stuff like describing undergrads as "brain dead zombies" and suggesting that the vast majority of us just don't give a damn. My comments were specifically directed at that portion of the comments that was counterproductive. In general, entitling a comment "tirade" is a good way of presaging the fact that any good ideas you have will be drowned out in the sea of invective that is sure to follow.
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Both would be better off if they put some effort into the enterprise. But neither has any incentive to cooperate. The student wastes energy trying to impress a dull preceptor. The preceptor waste energy trying to teach the brain-dead student. Both decide ultimately to approach precept with a certain amount of mental fatigue. The Prisoner's Dilemma reigns.
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I have been motivated to work in precepts where I want to impress a preceptor. Maybe if you made an effort or were dynamic we wouldn't be brain dead.
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i'm now sure which criticism exactly caro has a problem with. do you take issue with something like: "it seems like students themselves need to take some responsibility (not all, but a good portion) for the quality of precepts -- a point that this editorial utterly fails to mention," as one comment states? Seems fair to me. And as I read the comments, the problem appears to be the one-sidedness of the editorial, which places the onus the bad precepts on the preceptors and fails competely to address the issue from this perspective, which is something any good journalism, scholarship, or editorial should do.
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To Entitlementx2: Yea, I think we all welcome constructive criticism, and no article ever published in any newspaper is perfect- they all have problems, and I know that my columns can always benefit from a healthy dose of skepticism and critique. What went on here was not helpful, however. What got me was that so many people commenting just decided to rant against what actually seemed to be some good ideas. To pretend as if certain preceptors wouldn't benefit from what the Ed board proposed is absurd. In reality, the problems in the editorial are really not the big of a deal - the ed board is writing an opinion piece, just like our columnists, and isn't and shouldn't always go out of its way to make other people's points - and are being taken way out of proportion.
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Moral of story: some preceptors bad, some good. some undergrads zombies, some not. editorial tries to find easy solution -- add more hours training.
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I concur with the comment posted by Living in New Brunswick. This rather dopey editorial would have been greatly improved had the Prince board learned about, and taken a position on, the economics of teaching for graduate students, rather than treating whatever (minuscule) teaching problems there are at this university as purely matters of culture and training. The fact is that preceptors are often very poorly compensated; the recent creation of DCE status worsened the problem by shifting many post-enrolled students from "Lecturer" status, in which 5 precept hours per semester was nominal half-time employment, to DCE, in which 6 precept hours generate the same pay. Many post-enrolled doctoral students need to stay at or near this teaching load in order to put food on the table and keep paying rent; we're talking about a near-poverty-level wage here, so opting for less teaching and less pay is often difficult. If the Prince wants more attentive and prepared instructors in precept, it should be pushing the administration to compensate preceptors more reasonably, not castigating preceptors for failing to care enough.
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<shudder> "Princeton is renowned as a research university that is also committed to educating undergraduates." I hate that this is now the "mission statement" of the school. I loved the good ole days when the excellent research university part was assumed instead of trumpted around like we have something to prove. Grad Students face a tough row to hoe when they come to PU, most do an extraordinary job. The focus on the undergrads is what sets us apart from our "peer institutions" that we seem determined to mimic more and more every year rather than be our own institution.
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If no one else is going to say it, I will: I'm a third-year engineering student and I've spent the past three years in horrible, miserable labs and precepts where it's impossible to learn anything from the uninterested grad students in charge unless you speak fluent Chinese. In fact, in one of my classes last semester there were two guys who were Chinese who would go meet with the preceptor at office hours to discuss the psets in Chinese, and then they would come back and explain the problems to the rest of us because they, unlike him, could speak English. Thanks ed board for finally writing something useful and true.
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To those ranting: Yea, the article has problems in not seeming to have given much if any thought to your side of the position. With that said, you guys are hardly better. Your response to an article that blames grad students when precepts are bad is to blame undergrads when precepts are bad- for instance, "braindead zombie." I mean come on, if you want us to think better of grad students, insulting us is hardly the way to go about it. The truth is that I've had great preceptors - my current POL preceptor comes to mind - and I've had atrocious ones as well - freshman year math, shudder. By the same token, I've had precepts where I show up incredibly well prepared and ones where I maybe skimmed the reading at most because I have two papers due that day. So for god's sake, don't bash an article by making the exact same mistakes you're accusing others of.
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I wholeheartedly agree with this. Undergrads often take classes and precepts for granted, as if just showing up is going above and beyond what is expected of them. I've learned one thing while precepting undergrad courses, and that's not to spend too much time on the precepts and more time individually interacting with the undergrads who actually give a damn. It's a whole lot more rewarding that way.
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i'd like to follow up on one of the previous comments, that "Undergrads, by contrast, don't even do the reading half the time." It's very hard to lead a discussion when students haven't read and often haven't attended lectures. It might help to remember that most precepts have a student ration of something like 10 students for every 1 preceptor, so it seems like students themselves need to take some responsibility (not all, but a good portion) for the quality of precepts -- a point that this editorial utterly fails to mention. Once again, for dailyprincetonian editors, any failing must be the failing of grad students and not underprepared undergrads. Maybe we should hold mandatory "how to do your reading and pay attention in class" workshops for undergrads, so that by the time they graduate they can know how to read an argument clearly and actually talk about it. Of course I'm joking, that's what precepts are for -- just as they are also for helping to train grad students to teach. grad students might not get it right all the time, but it's about time for undergrads to stop making excuses and to take responsibility for their own education.
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It is fine that some undergraduates perceive that a solution to this "problem" is to reform the training system, and to ensure that non-native English speakers in particular receive closer attention. One cannot blame them for nurturing the profoundly inflated idea that we are here solely to enhance their undergraduate experience. Although many of us sincerely enjoy teaching, and put hours into it above and beyond what is expected, we also are being paid to write top-notch dissertations that will advance knowledge in our respective fields. When, upon teaching our first few precepts, we ascertain that many undergraduates themselves don't care to do the reading or display much curiosity at all (there are clearly exceptions), it becomes clear that we shouldn't be devoting our short lives as Princeton graduate students to enhancing their experience. In fact, most faculty members flat out warn graduate students from spending too much time and energy on precepts, which distracts even the best PhD candidates from timely completion. For undergraduates who feel like they aren't getting the most out of precepts, the best solution is not to implement a more comprehensive teaching training program (which would, in short, piss many of us off), but rather to get your fellow undergraduates to care enough to show up to precept in some form other than braindead zombie. On the topic of non-native speakers -- there are already extensive resources. The horrific "trap" in the system is that most international students in the past had not been adequately informed that they would be required to pass an English exam upon arrival. If they do not pass, some of them will face pressure to leave. As I understand it, this crucial contingency is now communicated in advance. In summary, it is discouraging to see how graduate students in this place are treated like tools. When you arrive, you quickly learn that you are identified with the word "sketchy" -- then you learn that you are expected to devote yourself to enhancing the undergraduate experience. What an awesome deal! A little R-E-S-P-E-C-T goes a long way...
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a)"Most graduate students have no prior teaching experience" -Where is this information from? b)"under the current system, preceptors are only required to attend a day-and-a-half long session at the McGraw Center." -Not universally true. Some departments have semester-long teaching/pedagogy seminars that are required for all preceptors. c) "At the same time, the preceptors have no real gauge of how they're doing;" -Many times the onus here is the professor. There are professors who support their preceptors, who meet with them every week, and there are some who are AWOL, who preceptors only see at lecture. So it seem the accountability, in some cases, trickles up. d)"The preceptors will leave Princeton with solid teaching experience that will aid them in their careers." -Princeton graduate students are already at a disadvantage compared to other universities because we rarely get to teach our own classes, unlike most other institutions. So since graduate teaching is de-emphasized because Princeton is undergrad-orientated in the first place, the "aid" suggestion still doesn't add up to this disadvantage.
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I'm going to repost my comment I put on the "Preceptors prepare to take charge" article, which was a "news" piece that said the same thing: It would have been nice if, instead of suggesting that TAs should use some of their copious free time to take more classes on teaching, the piece had talked about the mixed incentives for teaching the university has. In some departments, you actually take a pay cut to teach. If there were "hazard pay" for teaching beyond your minimum, the better and more experienced TAs would be more inclined to teach.
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Re: Re: Teaching Teaching Thank you for your response. We are glad that you seem to have had a positive experience in your precepts. Many of use have had wonderful experiences in precepts as well. We do not deny that "grad students are, for the most part, extremely intelligent individuals who put sincere effort into teaching undergrads." In fact, we suggest that the University do more to reward (often under-appreciated) preceptors for their important contributions to undergraduate education. There are certainly aspects of the precept system that can be improved. We believe that the suggestions in the editorial would better equip graduate students to impart their wealth of knowledge and their important and diverse experiences to undergraduates more effectively.
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I'm an undergrad, but I have to say, rarely have I read a dumber editorial than this one. The preceptorial system is just fine; grad students are, for the most part, extremely intelligent individuals who put sincere effort into teaching undergrads. Undergrads, by contrast, don't even do the reading half the time. This article is really just a way for the ed. board to feel self-important by staking out a "position" on a non-issue. The NYT runs fake trend pieces, but at least they don't editorialize about it two days later. I'm sorry, but it's just true -- the Prince is pathetic.
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