[This post spawned from a recent comment.]
I find it amusing that engineers — stereotypically misanthropes — are forced to work in groups during college, while English majors–ply-ers of communication–are never forced to turn in a group book report.
Group work for engineering students is ostensibly for team-building skills. While at one time this may have been the case, my engineering professors have confessed (in the security of their office–not in front of the class) that groups are a byproduct of rising student:teacher ratios and lack of funding for teaching assistants (TAs).
My material science engineering (MSE) professor, a wonderfully endearing and knowledgeable mainstay at NCSU, explained how his required intro course used to have a laboratory component. After cutting that the department removed the funding for TAs. Dr. Kasichainula (Jag), my professor, consequentially made cuts of his own: Scan-tron quizzes replaced the mountains of homework that would be impossible to grade*, and every time we have a quiz Dr. Jag asks for all the extra Scan-tron sheets, “because they cost money.” His tone betrays who is paying for those sheets a la carte.
I believe teacher’s salaries should partially be determined via the number of students they teach; perhaps above a certain threshold teachers receive ‘overtime’ pay. Such an action would discourage institutions from taking in more students while paying teachers the same because they are teaching the same number of sections.
Another interesting idea would be for professors to decide what percentage the TA(s) earns. For example, if the department’s budget for ‘Engineering 101, section 001′ is $10,000, a professor can keep all $10,000, forsaking friends and family in order to grade everything in a timely manner, or he can hire one or more TAs and pay them an agreed upon percentage of the $10,000. I worked under this pay system as a plumber’s helper, and while I have no idea of how the TA system/budget currently works, I thought I’d throw this out there.
*Thank goodness he doesn’t use Webassign. Perhaps the department couldn’t afford that, either.
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