Hundreds of new teaching assistants will be hired at UCLA this year, but some graduate students are expressing skepticism about the long-term security of these positions.
To accommodate the largest undergraduate freshman class in the university’s history, Provost Scott Waugh allocated $15 million in bridge funding toward undergraduate education in April, said Judith L. Smith, dean and vice provost of undergraduate education.
To ensure enough TAs to teach the sections, 400 new teaching assistant positions will be created this year.
“We have more enrolled undergraduates, so there will be more TA positions,” said Robin Garrell, dean of the graduate division. “More TA spots will mean more TAs will have access to TA shifts if they want or need them.”
The increase in TA positions will allow for more than 800 additional discussion sections for undergraduate students.
“For (undergraduate) students it means we’d be able to meet their needs so we can offer more sections where TAs are needed,” Smith said. “Students will be able to get the classes they need.”
For graduate students, a job as a teaching assistant is a means to fund their education. But current and former TAs are not convinced that more TA positions will be a good thing.
Kyle Arnone, a doctorate student in sociology with three years of TA experience, said he sees a distinction between job security and the number of positions available.
“Before, you’d get an entire year, guaranteed three quarters of employment,” Arnone said. “What’s been happening now is that there’s a higher proportion of TAs working on an insecure basis, more quarter-to-quarter than yearly basis.”
Thirty-five departments in the College of Letters and Science will be hiring more teaching assistants. Most of the new positions will be available in lower division and higher-enrolled courses where there will be a boom in enrollment, Garrell said.
More money will be allocated to the social sciences and humanities, where teaching assistant positions play a bigger role in the funding of graduate students’ studies, Smith said.
Five departments with greater numbers of first-year students will be hiring at a higher rate ““ chemistry and biochemistry, comparative literature, mathematics, Spanish and Portuguese and the freshman cluster program.
But the boost in positions represents a reversal in recent trends. In the past few years, some departments at UCLA have moved toward hiring fewer teaching assistants. TAs receive a set salary, and as long as they teach at least 25 percent of the year, they also receive a fee and tuition waiver for the year.
With rising tuition costs, however, departments have had to pay out more in the waiver. This has caused fewer acceptances across departments, Smith said.
Dustianne North, a doctorate student who was a teaching assistant in the social welfare department, said the lower acceptance rate improved the ability of the department to fund its graduate students but also increased the workload for a limited number of TAs.
At the same time the undergraduate classes were increasing, the number of TAs was decreasing, North said.
“For some departments it’s a workload issue, where some TAs are working more hours than they should, being underpaid, and because of the added work, they’re not finishing their school on time,” North said. “It’s a situation where you either have a job in the department and are being overworked or you don’t have a job at all.”