What are some of the biggest problems with undergraduate
education at UCLA? How can the problems be solved? Valentin
Lance
Second-year, neuroscience
Large class sizes are probably the biggest problem. There are
too many students in class. We need smaller class sizes and greater
class participation requirements. I think we need more active
involvement of the professors in student learning such as more
active student research. Maybe greater emphasis on discussion with
the professor than with the teaching assistants because the
professors are more knowledgeable about the material. Maybe greater
exposure of what the professors actually do. A greater correlation
between what you learn in class and what you’ll be doing in
the real world, as opposed to just these abstract concepts you
learn. Kelly Patterson
Third-year, physiological science
I would change how competitive it is. In a lot of the science
classes I’m taking, nobody wants to help anybody else because
they’re afraid that person will do better than them.
You’re out for yourself basically, kind of cutthroat. I went
to a community college and it was more friendly there. Maybe the
tests could be easier and be graded on a straight scale but that
would defeat the purpose of going to a university. Some of the
classes are really big but I think they’re okay. The
professors make their office hours accessible to most people and
it’s really your choice to go to them. But I find that I
learn more from the teaching assistants than the professors because
the professors are more worried about their research. They
don’t really teach us anything; they just give a lecture
explaining how they understand it. Zory Shaposhnik
Graduate student, pharmacology
Well, number one you have a lot of large classes. Some of the
classes are too large and you don’t interact much with the
professors. They seem to just lecture and not really interact with
students. There’s not really any interest in how you’re
doing for the most part. The good part is there are a lot of
choices of courses you can take and there are a lot of
opportunities for research at UCLA. Maybe we could have professors
actually teach discussion sections. For scientific classes
discussions are very important because you may have questions you
can’t ask in a lecture. I think they should hire professors
who actually want to teach. For the most part the emphasis is on
research with a minor emphasis on teaching. Jennifer Tolkan
Fourth-year, cognitive science
At UCLA they do not have enough money to pay all the teaching
assistants so a lot of my classes in the psychology department do
not have teaching assistants or discussion sections. And it’s
hard to get everything out of lecture that we are supposed to know
for tests. Definitely, we could get more attention on students.
More classes should have discussions because it’s nice to be
able to talk to some sort of authority one on one and clarify your
questions. Not all people can make it to office hours and so if you
have a discussion section that’s actually scheduled,
everybody has to go to it and more and more people can get
information they need. I have a lot of professors who really
don’t get their points across very well. A lot of them are
here for their research instead of to teach and you can usually
tell which professors those are.