Academia Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for academics and those enrolled in higher education. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I am in computer science in the usa with a PHD offer. I’ve been told that if u get funded with a TA position, it doesn’t necessarily slow your graduation time. Is this true? It seems obvious to me that someone who works more on research will be able to graduate faster.
I’m asking because I do enjoy TAing and would like to do so more than just the single semester requirement. Would this be a bad decision to specifically choose TA funding rather than RA funding?
This might depend on the field, but, in general it probably has only a minimal effect. Research in many fields takes time to "mature" and "ripen" in the mind. And serving several hours a week as a TA still leaves you time to think the deep thoughts that lead to breakthroughs. In fact, taking a break from deep thought to teach or assist in a course might actually be good for the overall effort.
Most people don't have an option, however. Funding is necessary. Most of the funding (most fields) is TA funding, since lots of course assistance is needed in the undergraduate program.
I once held a fellowship that was free of any obligations. I was no more "productive" then than later when I was a TA.
And, if you want a career in academia, spending some time as a TA is probably a plus when it comes time to look for a job.
In computer science, however, I'd expect a small effect. You need to take breaks of some kind from research in any case. Even professors do that.
Not really. It's because of the nature of research work. This extra time you get from not doing teaching work can matter if you know what to do next in your research, and that something is straightforward and time-consuming. However, much more often in research:
When you don't know what to do next, then having more time to spend on research isn't very helpful because it's just you staring at the computer screen. That's when having something else - whether it's teaching, designing experiments/courses, or reading Academia.SE - is a nice backup. It could even be better, because quite often when one thinks again about a problem after several hours one has new insights.
Off the top of my head the extra time is most helpful when you are writing your thesis, because that's actually something that is straightforward and time-consuming. This doesn't extrapolate to regular papers, because in my experience even if you are the person responsible for writing the paper, you can usually complete a draft quite fast; the real time-consuming part is getting feedback from co-authors.
See also this question: Is TA-ing worth the opportunity cost (of having more time for research)?
It shouldn't matter that much if you have good time management skills. However, in my experience a CS TA have a bit more work than a math TA, which I was. You write automated graders, deal with hundreds of students bugging you to debug their code etc etc.
Also, it was always a nice little break for me to teach undergrad math when I was doing my own research but I am not sure the same would apply to a CS PhD student. It might be draining to working on your programming/simulation all day and then do some more of that for an undergrad class, which would be most likely uninspiring.
On the flip side, if you get RA funding/fellowship that could come with its own pressure/deadline. Your supervisor could make you work at the lab 40+ hr/week and I have heard horror stories of overworked PhD students from EEC/CS/Engineering field.
As others have noted this may be field- and department-specific. When I was in U.S. grad school in mathematics, non-U.S. students took roughly one semester less than U.S. students to graduate (on average) and it was widely thought that TAing was the reason. (Ex-U.S. students were more likely to have external funding, e.g. from their home countries, meaning that they did not have to teach as often.)
As others have said, TAing is generally not an enormous commitment of time, and if you plan on continuing in academia it certainly helps to get used to balancing teaching against other responsibilities, but the hours do add up. You might ask students in your program about the actual circumstances of TA responsibilities - for example, whether it is expected that TAs also attend lecture in the classes that they TA for (sometimes the case), about the average number of students that a TA is responsible for (may vary widely by school and class within a school), the burdens of grading, and so on. You didn't ask, but for better or worse I do not think TAing experience beyond the minimum is a material factor in most academic job searches, even at teaching-oriented schools.
