During shopping period this winter, while hundreds of undergraduates scurried around campus trying to fill their schedules, Kristin Poole and other graduate students like her watched, waited and hoped.

Poole, a third-year graduate student in the English Department, says she needed a job as a teaching fellow in order to pay the bills. But because of fluctuations in enrollment, increasing numbers of graduate students and changes in section size, she wasn't certain until the very last minute--when undergraduates turned in their study cards--that she would get work at all.

Prospective teaching fellows are at the mercy of these undergraduates, whose course choices will determine whether graduate students sink or swim.

And some now say the solution to the problem of graduate student job insecurity may be the elimination of shopping period and the institution of preregistration for undergraduates.

More Students, Fewer Jobs

Graduate students rely on teaching fellow jobs to help pay for everything from tuition to rent. In addition, many need the teaching experience to prepare them for future careers in academia.

But due to recent trends in the numbers and sizes of sections, fewer job opportunities are available for graduate students in search of teaching jobs.

In the past four or five years, standards for section sizes have been codified and better enforced, according to Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education David Pilbeam. Many graduate students say the new guidelines often lead to fewer sections and subsequently to fewer teaching fellow positions.

The guidelines vary from department to department and depend upon the type of course, Pilbeam says. In a typical humanities course, he says, a single section may contain up to 20 students.

In addition, a course is often not granted any section leaders unless at least 33 students enroll, graduate students says.

When these changes are compounded with fewer undergraduates in some departments, prospective teaching fellows are hit hard, graduate students and department coordinators say. And the problems, they say, can only get worse as the recession prompts more college graduates to pursue higher degrees.

Both the English and Comparative Literature departments have seen increases in the size of their first-year graduate classes. And while these graduate students will only begin teaching in their third years, their colleagues have begun to fear for the future.

"God only knows what we're going to do when it's their time to teach," Poole says. "We're already wondering, are we going to be employed?"

The Scramble

The process of finding a teaching fellow job varies among departments and students.