Every day after class I am met with a hostile attitude from my suitemates as they struggle late into the morning hours with their math and science homework.
While the material is difficult, the real frustration is derived from the lack of help found in section and lecture. This problem is due to the fact that a growing number of professors and teaching assistants cannot speak English in a direct, fluent manner.
While a great number of graduate students, the majority of foreign ones included, turn out to be both effective and impressive resources, the small number without the necessary skills to teach a class often leaves students who are trying to get help frustrated. The absence of help in sections is simply seen as one of the harsh facts of college life, with essentially nothing the student can do about it.
It’s one thing for graduate students to have some difficulty in leading sections, seeing as they lack any formal teaching experience. The professors, however, should be proficient at leading and teaching a class. There are a large number of professors who truly relish researching, with no such zeal for educating. Many of these professors are brilliant minds, yet have no place in the classroom.
This sad occurrence is regularly found in one of the school’s most difficult programs: computer science. Because it is such a math-oriented major, it is quite common to hire professors without any communication skills. Consequently, students of this new and highly profitable field often sit in lecture halls with no idea what the professor is talking about.
“It’s the job of the professor to deliver the material in a coherent manner the students can learn from. The (steep) tuition price entitles students to professional conduct,” said Andrew Nguonly, a second-year computer science student.
Because UCLA’s graduate programs attract such an immense number of foreign students, the undergraduate students are subject to less of an education. A seeming paradox is at work, with better graduate programs directly resulting in a worse undergraduate class.
In an age when medical school acceptance is impossibly difficult even with a prestigious degree, the ability of a student to learn in a conducive, interactive environment is a vital necessity in keeping up UCLA’s level of prestige. For the sake of protecting the school’s ability to graduate well-qualified students, here are a few mandates to consider.
If a graduate student is clearly very intelligent yet still not fully fluent in English, perhaps taking a basic language and writing class or two is in order before they start teaching instead of having them take the class concurrently, as is required now.
While one or two quarters of an English class couldn’t vastly improve speaking skills, it could deliver a much more articulate and useful teacher. Though heavy graduate workloads are often overwhelming already, the addition of a couple more classes for the entire duration of graduate school is hardly a lot to ask.
Another potential alternative for students with somewhat of a language barrier is disregarding teaching at all. Especially for chemistry and biology classes, where a comprehensive explanation can save the student eons of extra work, the point of section can become worthless.
“I often don’t go to section because the teaching assistants lack the communication skills to provide any new insight,” said Alon Nachshon, a second-year chemical engineering student.
Graduate students without the ability to speak clearly can focus more extracurricular time to research, while those more eloquent do more teaching.
In a similar fashion, the university cannot keep forcing research-oriented professors into teaching.
With the help of professor evaluations, the school could keep strict tabs on which professors should teach and which should stick to researching.
Even if professors want to teach but don’t hold the necessary skills, their simple desire doesn’t outweigh their limited facilities.
These suggestions are not without flaws. Teaching assistants are overworked as it is, and the idea of making it harder to be one might seem preposterous.
And enforcing rules and regulations on who can be allowed to teach can seem potentially discriminatory.
Yet the ability to learn as fully as possible is the foundation of the school. If it cannot deliver this basic principle to all students, the school is simply letting the students down.
E-mail Bromberg at mbromberg@media.ucla.edu.
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