EXPOSED
The modal postsecondary TA is a graduate student who grades problem sets and essays, writes feedback, holds office hours, answers course-forum questions, and runs discussion or lab sections. Grading, rubric application, feedback drafting, and 24/7 Q&A are exactly what LLM course assistants now do at usable quality and near-zero marginal cost, and universities are deploying them explicitly to cut grading load. What survives is the embodied part: standing in a lab or seminar room, reading confusion on faces, proctoring, and running hands-on demonstrations — plus the fact that TA lines exist partly as graduate funding, which insulates headcount from pure efficiency logic.
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier. Rubric-based grading of problem sets, drafting written feedback, and answering repeat forum questions are already being handed to LLM graders in large lecture courses, and what holds this at 8 rather than 4 is the live discussion section, wet-lab or studio supervision, and proctoring that still requires a body in a room at a fixed hour.
Some physical or field component. A 10 fits the split day: office hours and grading happen at a laptop anywhere, but running a chemistry or biology lab section means handling reagents and equipment, enforcing PPE, and physically walking benches — done in a controlled campus space on a fixed timetable, not an uncontrolled field site, which is why it sits mid-scale rather than in the teens.
No licence, no signature requirement. TAs hold no teaching licence and no credential beyond enrolled-student status; the instructor of record signs the grade roster, owns FERPA compliance and academic-integrity findings, and the lab PI holds the safety authority, so a TA's judgment can be overturned by an email.
Some relationship component. Students genuinely bond with the TA who explains the proof that finally clicks and writes the recommendation-adjacent recognition, but the appointment turns over every semester or two and rosters get reshuffled, so the relationship rarely outlives the term — an 11 reflects real rapport with no continuity to protect it.
Executes defined procedures on defined inputs. Grades are set against a rubric and a curve the instructor of record defines, suspected plagiarism gets referred upward rather than adjudicated, and syllabus and accommodation decisions are not the TA's to make; the discretion that exists is pacing a section and deciding how much partial credit an unusual solution earns.
Substitute Teachers, Short-Term EXPOSED
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