I came back to school after a long break (5+ years) and jumped right back into higher level courses (junior and senior level courses). First thing I noticed was that a professor did not lecture or hold any office hours, instead a hired part-time lecturer, who had another full time job, filled this role. Secondly I noticed that out of the 20 or so TAs in this course, at least 75% are undergraduate students who took this course during their undergrad and received a 3.7 GPA or higher.
This is at a very respectable public university in WA, and in their computer science department.
Any thoughts on this? When I attended a university in the Midwest years ago, all lectures were taught by professors or assistant professors, and TAs were graduate students. Have things changed? This seems very odd to me, especially for such a prestigious computer science department.