Classes taught by students?

[MarineBluePsy]

I'm in my first year of a Clinical Psych PhD and just curious if my program is doing something unusual or not.  I've just learned that two of my core classes will be taught by other students (either a second or third year) in my program.  There will be a faculty member overseeing both classes, but students farther in the program have said the faculty member never shows up and leaves everything to the students who are teaching.  This seems really odd to me.  I'm familiar with students guest lecturing for graduate classes or teaching undergraduate classes, but teaching a core graduate class largely unsupervised?  I don't assume I can dictate how the program runs, but I don't think it is unreasonable to be concerned about whether or not I will learn everything I need to.  Our program isn't experiencing a shortage of available and highly qualified faculty either.  Has anyone else experienced this in their program?    

[fuzzylogician]

All I can say is that at my PhD institution and at my current institution students are not even allowed to give one lecture (as a TA/visiting lecturer) unsupervised. They are certainly not allowed to be instructor of record for any class. At another institution I was a postdoc at, advanced students (3rd year+) were sometimes asked to teach the large all-purpose intro, but I don't think anyone's ever been asked to teach a graduate course. So at least from my own experience, this is fairly unusual. 

[rising_star]

That wouldn't have been allowed in either of my graduate programs. At both, you were required to have at least a master's degree before teaching undergrads as instructor of record and you could not grade for or instruct a graduate level course. Definitely unusual to me.

[OhSoSolipsistic]

That is odd, at least for graduate courses. I know a bunch of UC classes with graduate TAs who've led lectures, and I've taught Intro Psych courses at a CSU after getting my masters, but I haven't heard of grads teaching other grad courses. I'm not too familiar with clinical, though. Is your school private? I know that some smaller private clinical schools tend to be more exploratory in their approach.

[MarineBluePsy]

Ok so its nice to know I'm not crazy in thinking this is odd.  I'm at a large public university and my program is APA accredited and well funded.  I asked my advisor about this and was told that though the students will be teaching both courses entirely they will not be listed as the instructor of record, but the assigned faculty member will be.  Ok, but if students ahead of me have made it very clear that the assigned faculty member is extremely hands off, even if there are issues, then something is amiss right?  To my knowledge none of the students being considered for this already have Master's degrees either, though that wouldn't make me feel any better.  

I hate to sound ungrateful for the opportunity to earn a PhD, but I find it alarming and maybe even insulting that any part of my education is being left to students who know little more than I do and have little to no field experience.  My expectation was that I would be learning from well educated professionals with years of experience and the ability to guide me toward a successful and stable career.  I also don't see how complaining about this would do anything more than get me labeled a complainer, especially since my adviser was so nonchalant about it.    

[OhSoSolipsistic]

I would contact the graduate department or appropriate college to try to get more context under anonymity due to concerns about labeling. Maybe the courses are so well-structured with plenty of clear, straightforward material that the instructor matters little, or maybe that instructor's skirting their responsibilities. Regardless, you should be able to find out more without fearing negative consequences - it's your education.

[TakeruK]

1 hour ago, MarineBluePsy said:

Ok so its nice to know I'm not crazy in thinking this is odd.  I'm at a large public university and my program is APA accredited and well funded.  I asked my advisor about this and was told that though the students will be teaching both courses entirely they will not be listed as the instructor of record, but the assigned faculty member will be.  Ok, but if students ahead of me have made it very clear that the assigned faculty member is extremely hands off, even if there are issues, then something is amiss right?  To my knowledge none of the students being considered for this already have Master's degrees either, though that wouldn't make me feel any better.  

As the others said above, this is unusual. There are some cases where students are able to teach as instructors of record, but these are usually first year undergrad classes. 

What you are describing here sounds like a bad deal for both the students who are taking the class as well as for the students who have to teach. I am going to guess that the instructors doing the teaching aren't getting paid as instructors of record and they aren't getting credit to be instructors of record either! Unfortunately, I don't really know what you can do next other than try to talk to the University anonymously. I wouldn't go as far as accusing your department of misconduct without more details, but as I said, this sounds suspicious.

[ellieotter]

I have quite a few friends in many different areas of psychology (clinical, counseling, and experimental) who all have been trained to teach college courses. Most only teach for undergraduate classes but I have heard of a few who have taught for grad level classes. Most of the time they only teach the lab portion of a course so yeah, that sounds super unusual that they're in charge of core classes. Totally understand your concern because I'd feel the same way.

[AP]

I'm in the humanities and this doesn't happen. I have friends in the STEM sciences and they had to teach a class they only took the previous year. I don't know how the class plays into their doctoral education, how supervision works, if they were core classes, or if this is discipline-specific. All I can say is that it seems to me it may be more frequent than I initially thought... my two cents.

[FacelessMage]

17 hours ago, MarineBluePsy said:

I'm in my first year of a Clinical Psych PhD and just curious if my program is doing something unusual or not.  I've just learned that two of my core classes will be taught by other students (either a second or third year) in my program.  There will be a faculty member overseeing both classes, but students farther in the program have said the faculty member never shows up and leaves everything to the students who are teaching.  This seems really odd to me.  I'm familiar with students guest lecturing for graduate classes or teaching undergraduate classes, but teaching a core graduate class largely unsupervised?  I don't assume I can dictate how the program runs, but I don't think it is unreasonable to be concerned about whether or not I will learn everything I need to.  Our program isn't experiencing a shortage of available and highly qualified faculty either.  Has anyone else experienced this in their program?    

I had this at the university where I did my Master's, although these classes were 1) taught by students who had already been awarded Master's degrees, and 2) were pretty much the experts in their teaching subject (e.g., the police psychology course was being taught by someone who conducted research in the area of police psychology and was just wrapping up her dissertation). It's unreal to me that they would let some just barely into a PhD program teach a course without having a separate graduate degree beforehand. Sounds like the faculty is just lazy in this case (this happened to me with an undergraduate course I was TAing for where me and the other TA basically became the defacto instructors because the prof rarely showed up or did much of anything).

[The_Old_Wise_One]

What are the classes? 

[MarineBluePsy]

So I'm going to carefully look into the University policies on this and see what I find out.  Even if it turns out to be allowed here I still want to be sure I learn everything I'm supposed to, so I may have to look into supplementing my learning as well.

[ko29]

If you find out this violates University policies (or APA policies), I would suggest talking to members of your cohort or more advanced students about taking action as a group. I would imagine your peers in your position and other students who have been the "instructor" without any of the benefits (as TakeruK mentioned) would be willing to support actions to remedy this. If not, I would decide next steps carefully; academic climates can be very political and complaints rarely end up being anonymous. Depending on your relationship with your advisor, you might choose to bring your concerns up with them again and express them in a way that will prompt him or her to give more than a nonchalant response. Another option is to wait and see what the courses are like before making any decisions. You could always give feedback in your course eval about this issue.