Princeton University gets a lot of public relations mileage out of its preceptorial system. The school's tour guides, its admissions interviewers and its official web site all make a point of telling prospective students exactly what preceptorials are and why they are a such a unique, important feature of the undergraduate academic program.
Unfortunately, however, the usefulness of the preceptorial system does not extend very far beyond the realm of advertising. With good reason, a lot of Princeton students see their precepts as weekly nuisances rather than as worthwhile opportunities for close interaction with instructors.
The central problem with Princeton's preceptorial system is that it places so much responsibility in the hands of such inexperienced people. To become a professor at this school, you have to prove yourself not only by earning a Ph.D., but also by performing several years of postdoctoral work in whatever field you've chosen to study. Prospective professors who lack teaching ability tend to be weeded out before they actually get the chance to run a course. To become a preceptor, meanwhile, it is relatively easy: you simply have to be a graduate student.
Inexperience might not be a huge problem if preceptors didn't play a central role in running undergraduate courses, but they do. Students at Princeton have most or all of their direct contact with the faculty through their precepts: preceptors are the ones who evaluate papers, who answer students' questions, who run the class discussions. These are some of the most difficult and most important jobs in teaching, and none of them are really appropriate for grad-student preceptors who, however intelligent they may be, have never taught before.
While it is normally delegated to preceptors without a second thought, the job of evaluating student work is more complicated than meets the eye. Grades are important for the obvious reason that they help determine where students can get into graduate school. Grades are also important for the reason that, when accompanied by comments, they tell students how well they've mastered the material and how they can improve their performance in the future. In order to evaluate their students fairly and effectively, instructors need to have a sound sense of justice and an ability to criticize constructively. Unfortunately, neither one of these skills can be taught in graduate school; these skills can only be acquired through years of teaching experience. By allowing grad-student preceptors to evaluate undergraduate work, Princeton undermines both the consistency and the quality of its grading system. Graduate students should not be put in charge of running class discussions any more readily than they should be put in charge of grading papers. Students see their preceptorials as their primary opportunity to ask questions and to clear up points of confusion. Preceptors have to do a lot of thinking on their feet, and they have to be able to give extemporaneous explanations of difficult concepts. To run a class discussion well, a preceptor needs a firm grasp of the material, good speaking skills and a certain combination of charisma and patience. While many graduate students have these qualities, many do not. The knack for close interaction with students, again, is one that can only really be acquired through years of teaching experience.
Even if preceptors were as competent as professors, the preceptorial system would still have some negative effects on Princeton's academic program. Princeton's preceptors are given so much responsibility that they often have more influence over the quality of their courses than the professors themselves. But unlike professors, preceptors are numerous and relatively anonymous. Students do not have a way of knowing ahead of time which preceptors will be teaching which courses; nor do students have any way of knowing ahead of time which preceptors are popular and which ones are not. Thus the preceptorial system makes it that much harder for students to know which courses are worth taking.
Wealthy as it is, Princeton probably cannot afford to go out and hire hundreds upon hundreds of new professors to replace the existing grad-student preceptors. However, the school can and should take steps to minimize the role that graduate students play in running undergraduate courses. This might mean recruiting at least some new faculty members, or extending professors' office hours, or, at the very least, standardizing grading procedures within courses. Princeton might also switch over to a system like the one Dartmouth has, where small group discussions are held less frequently but are run by more experienced instructors. With the right improvements, perhaps Princeton's preceptorial system will eventually seem as attractive to existing students as it does to prospective ones.
(Robert Schmidt is from Boston, MA. He can be reached at rschmidt@princeton.edu)
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