Undergraduate Teaching Assistants
How you are compensated
If you are invited by a member of the Cornell faculty to serve as a Teaching Assistant, you are free to do so. However, the ILR faculty have determined that you are to be compensated in money for that service and not in academic credit.
Why pay instead of credit?
A number of years ago, the ILR faculty became concerned that ILR students who did well in some courses were repeatedly invited to become TAs in those courses. Awarded academic credit for dealing with the same academic material three or four times, those students were being induced to abbreviate their learning while at Cornell. They were being encouraged to miss two or even three new courses while taking time and receiving credits in a course that they had completed once before.
The ILR faculty decided that ILR students should receive credit for courses completed, not as compensation for work done to assist an instructor. They went on to say that compensation for work could be offered in money and that ILR students who were invited to work as assistants in instruction of a course should be compensated in that way too.
