Yale Computer Science Dept overworked, understaffed
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Yale Computer Science Dept overworked, understaffed
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Re: Yale Computer Science Dept overworked, understaffed
#2If anyone wants to email Yale's incoming President Peter Salovey to let him know why this is not OK, his email is Peter.Salovey@yale.edu
Re: Yale Computer Science Dept overworked, understaffed
#3CS enrollment numbers are way up in every school. Yale is complaining about 200... at Princeton our intro course has over 500. At Stanford almost every undergrad takes a CS course at some point.
We have a good number of lecturers in addition to tenure-track faculty members (at Princeton CS). They are extremely good and greatly decrease our load, so we haven't faced burnout so far. That said, enrollment was up so sharply this semester that we had to hire lecturers on a month's notice, which is kind of insane. Also, we have a new industrial Master's program which lets us increase our number of TAs.
In spite of having adapted in all these ways and money not being a problem, we know that this won't continue to scale because enrollment growth shows no signs of slowing down. We're not sure what the long-term solution is going to be. Online education is part of it (and we're on Coursera), but so far we're not using it in a way that decreases our teaching staff requirements.
Strange times.
Re: Yale Computer Science Dept overworked, understaffed
#4Ugh this sounds familiar.
Back in 2008-2010 I was one of two sitting students on the Computer Science curriculum committee at Rensselaer Polytechnic University (RPI).
Three topics were always present:
1. What do we do about kids who come in knowing inadequate math and how does this keep happening?
2. Should we consider switching out C/C++ as the default for Java as the default. (The answer to this was almost always no, but many professors at RPI accepted assignments in multiple languages, usually whatever the TAs were familiar with. I used a lot of python later in the year instead of C/C++/Java)
3. God damn it we are understaffed.
I hate to say it but #3 was always brought up near the end of every meeting and was visibly discouraging to all the teachers involved. RPI at the time was on the war-path of cutting professors in every single field who did not participate in research (so called "clinical faculty") which included letting one of the best CS professors go.
That teacher for you RPI alum was Dave Hollinger. They let him go(?) at the end of '08 but he taught a single class in '09 before leaving for good. Everyone loved him. http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=100535
Re: Yale Computer Science Dept overworked, understaffed
#5I'm a CS student at the University of Washington.
We do something [that I consider] interesting here to staff TAs for courses, which is hire undergraduate teaching assistants. Generally, a course will have one head TA who is a grad student, and multiple undergraduate TAs. I've TA'd for a while as an undergraduate, and it's been a really great experience for my career.
Especially in the intro courses and lower level courses, I don't think that it's necessary to hire computer science gurus -- it's actually easier to find undergraduates who are capable and passionate for teaching than it is to find graduate students (partly because there are more undergraduates).
Some documents produced by one of the lecturers who I work for as a TA.
http://www.cs.washington.edu/public_files/publications/msb/h...
ftp://ftp.awl.com/cseng/authors/roberts/cs1-c/documents/ugradtas.txt
Re: Yale Computer Science Dept overworked, understaffed
#6Ugh this sounds familiar. Back in 2008-2010 I was one of two sitting students on the Computer Science curriculum committee at Rensselaer Polytechnic University (RPI). Three topics were always present: 1. What do we do about kids who come in knowing inadequate math and how does this keep happening? 2. Should we consider switching out C/C++ as the default for Java as the default. (The answer to this was almost always n…
Maybe part of the problem is the misnomer of the whole field itself. CS is not really science, it's math. It's about tools that every professional and scientist will later need. And as such, I'd argue that teaching is actually more important than research.
Of course, these tools need to be researched and developed as well, but more importantly do we need very capable teachers in order for people to build their foundation. IMO every Master of Science should have a good overview of which tools in math and "CS" there are available, and they should be proficient in at least two of each.
Re: Yale Computer Science Dept overworked, understaffed
#7I'm a CS student at the University of Washington. We do something [that I consider] interesting here to staff TAs for courses, which is hire undergraduate teaching assistants. Generally, a course will have one head TA who is a grad student, and multiple undergraduate TAs. I've TA'd for a while as an undergraduate, and it's been a really great experience for my career. Especially in the intro courses and lower level c…
That's a very smart model, particularly for programming.
Re: Yale Computer Science Dept overworked, understaffed
#8I'm a CS student at the University of Washington. We do something [that I consider] interesting here to staff TAs for courses, which is hire undergraduate teaching assistants. Generally, a course will have one head TA who is a grad student, and multiple undergraduate TAs. I've TA'd for a while as an undergraduate, and it's been a really great experience for my career. Especially in the intro courses and lower level c…
I was a TA as CS undergrad in Australia, as were many of my friends. I am obviously biased, but I think we were at least as good as half a grad student, if not a full one.
Re: Yale Computer Science Dept overworked, understaffed
#9Harvard is seeing a very similar trend. Our intro to CS course, CS 50 [1], had an enrollment of over 600 this Fall (up about 20%), making it one of the largest classes at the College [2]. Even its teaching staff, which numbers over 100, is bigger than most classes (and most of them are undergraduates) [3].
The data isn't in for this term yet, but pre-term planning data suggests that enrollment in CS 51 (our second-term CS course) will go up by about 40% (it experienced similar growth last year), and CS 181, a machine learning class, might nearly triple in size since it was last offered [4].
For smaller departments like Harvard's (and Yale's, which is even smaller still), there just aren't enough professors to go around, and with the enormous influx of students, I think the quality and variety of the courses offered has suffered. Many courses are only offered sporadically--especially systems courses--since there simply aren't enough professors to teach them all.
And that's to say nothing of the (undergraduate) teaching assistants, which bear much of the brunt of this trend. I TFed Harvard's algorithms course (which doubled in size over the two years I taught it), and am TFing our operating systems class this term (which if today's turnout was any guide looks like it might nearly triple in size). The workload was considerable, and I'm sorry to say that the feedback and individual attention I was able to provide students has gotten worse and more tardy because of this.
I don't think Harvard (and Yale, etc.) can cope with this sort of explosive growth for too much longer.
[1]: https://www.cs50.net
[2]: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/4/13/cs-greatest-grow...
[3]: https://www.cs50.net/staff/
[4]: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/12/17/ptp-data-obtain...
Re: Yale Computer Science Dept overworked, understaffed
#10If anyone wants to email Yale's incoming President Peter Salovey to let him know why this is not OK, his email is Peter.Salovey@yale.edu
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