What Is the Difference Between TAs and RAs?

Most colleges and universities hire undergraduate and graduate students to assist professors in their teaching and research responsibilities. Students benefit by gaining valuable experience and knowledge of the class or research material, while professors get much needed help. Two of the most common forms of assistantships are TAs and RAs.

Teaching Assistants (TAs) are students that help professors and instructors with the classes. TAs can be Graduate TAs, Undergraduate TAs or Secondary TAs. Graduate Teaching Assistants are graduate students at the university and have experience or some knowledge of the course being taught. Some universities that are suffering from budget cuts and employment retention often hire Graduate TAs as sole instructors of classes. This is an excellent opportunity for any student interesting in becoming a professor themselves one day. GTAs are generally paid a fixed income for the contractual period, usually one semester or one full academic year. They typically work 20 hours a week, holding office hours, tutoring, counseling, grading tests and homework, administering exams and assisting the professor in any other fashion. GTAs usually must also complete a training session before they are hired, which provides the professors and university with consistent teaching standards. Undergraduate TAs are undergraduate students that have taken the respective course before and received a satisfactory grade. They can be compensated with hourly pay, extra course credit or they can volunteer their time and efforts. Secondary TAs are adults that are not students but are interested in becoming instructors themselves and see the assistantship as excellent experience.

Research Assistants (RAs) are generally graduate or doctoral level students that aide professors with their professional research projects. Research assistantships are most popular at universities that are research focused and that employ a great deal of research staff. Professors can receive grants and funding from private sponsors, other research organizations and the federal government to conduct research in their field. They then often use part of the grant to hire RAs to help them with experiments, simulations, programming, writing research papers and setting up the lab. RAs generally work long hours under very demanding circumstances.

For students interested in becoming teachers themselves one day or assisting in ground breaking research studies, working for a professor as a teaching or research assistant might be right for you. Just make sure you understand the parameters and expectations of the position before you begin.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010 at 11:03 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.