University dismisses guide’s ranking

KU makes list for number of GTAs with upper-level courses

Kansas University didn’t make Princeton Review’s list of top party schools, but it was high on another list — schools that have graduate teaching assistants in charge of upper-level classes.

But KU officials said they were not concerned KU was ranked third nationally on the GTA list, partly because assistants teach far fewer classes than they did 10 years ago and partly because even Princeton Review admits its rankings are based on a handful of student surveys not hard data.

“They didn’t give any numbers,” said Lynn Bretz, a KU spokeswoman. “They just said there were a couple of anecdotal reports.”

The rankings, published in the book “The Best 357 Colleges,” are based on surveys collected on university campuses. Topics include student perceptions on varied topics including libraries, amount of studying, financial aid and social life.

“They do not reflect our opinions, nor do they perfectly reflect reality,” the authors wrote. “Our feeling is that students’ self-perceptions are quite valuable.”

KU was topped on the list of universities with too many teaching assistants by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Iowa. The only other Big 12 school on the list was the University of Nebraska, which ranked 20th.

Bretz said 15.5 percent of KU’s undergraduate courses in fall 2003 were taught by teaching assistants, which is down from about 35 percent in the mid-1990s.

A report by the Institute for Effective Educational Practice at Indiana University and the American Association for Higher Education said KU placed “strong emphasis on the quality of its undergraduate teaching and learning” and said the average percentage of undergraduate courses taught by assistants is 25 percent nationwide.

Brian Lindaman, co-president of KU’s Graduate Teaching Assistant Coalition, said he rarely heard complaints about too many teaching assistants teaching upper-level classes. Occasionally, he said, GTAs are recruited for upper-level courses when faculty members leave unexpectedly and a department doesn’t have time to replace them.

But he said having a high percentage of GTAs teaching lower-level courses shouldn’t be a concern.

“I think most GTAs feel they could do at least as good a job of explaining some of the material in lower-level courses,” he said.