A Note on the Use of Graduate Teaching Assistants in the Principles Course

Working independently, the authors of the first of these two articles come to conclusions somewhat contrasting to those reached by the authors of the second article. The findings in the former show that at Princeton University graduate teaching assistants are as effective as their more senior professors in teaching sections of the Principles of Economics course. In the latter, the authors show that at the University of Nebraska the graduate teaching assistants are significantly less effective when matched against television or independent study. As the editor's note on page 130 explains, these results demand careful interpretation because the experiments are not parallel.