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E-PrinceLast spring, Casey Walker GS was told he would be teaching four English precepts this fall. Though a seventh-year graduate student like Walker typically needs at least five or six teaching hours per semester to earn an annual income of ...(back to the article)
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English grad students need to learn to take what teaching they can get and be grateful to be employed at a major institution, not complain about short prep times. That's academic life: deal. Being a grad student here does not equal junior-colleague status: you're expendable hired help. However, sending the tenured faculty back into the classroom is an excellent plan. Some haven't seen a discussion section in years. Certainly all of them should be willing and able to teach outside their fields. (And if not, why not?)
Plenty of part-time work teaching English can be found in the area: just not at Princeton. Show some initiative, people. And finishing an English Ph.D. in five years is a luxury. Many schools make you do it in four. Question: why is that department admitting doctoral candidates at all, when the tenure-track market has frankly collapsed?
How many students appreciate having a grad student as a preceptor? Are your precepts helpful to your learning experience? Are the grad preceptors ever evaluated for teaching ability? Do they get training prior to teaching at Princeton?
These comments show little grasp of reality. Many graduate students can't take part-time jobs because they're not on the appropriate visas, and do you really want your preceptors to grade your papers during breaks at Taco Bell?
For those who say we should eliminate graduate students, the type of professor that we have at Princeton would not want to stay. They would have to teach much more than peers and Harvard or Yale, and so they would go elsewhere. It would turn Princeton into a Swarthmore.
The sums of money here are relatively small; how can the undergraduate population clamor for financial aid for eating club memberships but balk at providing a living wage for your teachers? It shows where the priorities are.
While the focus on the article is on graduate students, I think it's important that these changes are affecting undergraduates as well. The official "cap" on humanities precepts has now been raised to 17 (in the past few days), and many class sizes are exceeding that because student schedules don't always allow for even splits among the precepts for a given lecture.
Our faculty have always taught precepts and worked closely with undergraduates--and many cite that as the reason they like teaching here. The difference now is that they have larger precepts and more of them, thus less time and energy for their students.
Also, in response to Ord--it's true that some "part time work teaching English" (though not much, in this economy) can be found in the area--but not in late August and early September, when these cuts have been made. More than one graduate student effected by these cuts had opportunities to teach elsewhere but accepted the Princeton jobs instead in the spring, only to have those assignments taken away. The last-minute implementation of these policies was thoughtless and showed no respect for graduate students as adults with professional, financial, and familial responsibilities.
My question is: if this is not being done for cost-saving reasons, and if it hurts faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates, why do it?
I'm an alum from the mid-60s. Our English precepts were never more than 8 students, and the department had 250 "concentrators," the former term for majors. I understand that today's department is quite small, with a ratio of about 3 students for each professor. And the number of elective students is way down, too. So, no wonder the grad students can't get more teaching. (The man in his 5th year needs to finish up his degree, not teach 4 classes.) In my day, I never saw a single graduate teacher, and I can't say that I missed them. When you pay a Princeton tuition, you expect real professors.
@Living in New Brunswick: A) Nothing wrong with a grad student working a restaurant job to earn money. (Unless you think you're above such plebian labors?) B) Princeton in the sciences is a peer of Cal Tech, MIT, Harvard, Michigan, Berkeley, Stanford, etc. Princeton otherwise IS a Swarthmore.
Love the nostalgia, but in your day, we didn't have personal computers, need-blind financial aid, co-eds (first women in 1969), or a world class grad school. When you pay a Princeton tuition, you expect a 21st century education.
correction: need-blind admissions
Most English graduate students, especially in the later stages, ALREADY have to work second jobs. They tutor at the Writing Center. They tutor privately. They are research assistants for their professors. They work in test prep. They freelance copy-edit. And believe me they want to get out of here as fast as is humanly possible--you really think people are clinging to the glory of the Princeton name when even a lectureship or adjunct position somewhere (anywhere!) else would net twice the income of a grad student? Please.
Precepting gets you health insurance and, if you're lucky, 1,500 dollars a month or so to live on. When you cut that back the week before the semester starts--or two weeks into the semester (this is still going on)--you make it extremely hard financially on people who don't have a lot to begin with. Keep in mind that a lot of graduate students are married and some have children and dependents. If the University wants to save money cutting precept hours, that's fine. But graduate students deserve better than absolute last minute notice. Be decent enough to allow people to make other plans.
The five year support Princeton offers is generous--it's perfectly in line with what is offered by similar institutions. But the dissertation phase doesn't begin until midway through year 3, and the job market applications begin at the start of year 5. It's deeply, deeply unrealistic to assume that a dissertation written in 18 months will be at all competitive with institutions where people routinely spend two or three times as long writing and researching. The Deans know this, but choose to ignore it--or, apparently, counsel people to be "less ambitious" (won't THAT impress a job search committee!). The reality is that most students are going to need a 6th or even a 7th year, depending on the job climate (which, at the moment, is miserable).