Quote:
Originally Posted by A.Marlowe
Turns out I was wrong, the split is 70% Graduate Students, 30% Undergraduate. Thanks for pointing that out!
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I'd like to remark on why this is the case:
As I've said hundreds of times,
1)
TA-ships are forms of financial aid for grad students.
2) But of course, TA's also exist for the purpose of connecting students with professors in a more personal way.
So Mac needs a specific amount of TAs to accomplish (2). Let's say it's
x number of TAs, in total.
Mac also needs grad students, who can't always pay for their education (particularly because OSAP is tailored to undergrad students). So Mac says "Let's give out the financial aid first."
So suppose there are
y graduate student TAs. This means there are (
x -
y) 'left over' spots for undergrad TAs.
In math (since it's the only one I know) I believe we have a total of
three undergraduate TAs...which is a very very small percentage of the total TAs!
And it's for this reason. It turns out that there are about (.7*
x) number of grad students who need financial aid (ie. 70%), the left over are undergrads.
(This is perhaps even counter-intuitive, since it's not the best 'financial decision' Mac can make regarding the TA breakdown. But it's because money comes from other sources, such as grad student research, so when looking at how much money grad students bring in for the university, it
is actually the best financial decision).