[Goose]

I don't ascribe to the bigger is better principle when it comes to student population unless the campus infrastructure is in place first (dorms, dining, classroom seats, labs, etc.)  Also I feel the requirements for Stanford TA's should be upgraded.  Too many student TA's simply aren't that good at being class instructors.

Agreed...I hate to say it, but I did not have a great experience in some upper-level classes where my TAs had very limited command of the English language.  Did not make complex concepts easier to understand.

I had a professor for Stat 116 that did not speak English. I mean it literally. His lectures were totally unintelligible. He also couldn't work many of the problems from the textbook because he couldn't understand them. He was a visiting professor from mainland China. I never had problems with TAs that didn't speak the language, although I can see how that could happen. I did however have quite a few TAs whose grasp of the material was questionable.
 
When I was a TA myself I did have problems with a few students whose grasp of English wasn't all that great, but we worked through that. This was a graduate EE course and the students involved were French speakers. I don't speak French, so it took some doing. These students did speak some English so we could communicate except for vocabulary limitations. Once I figured out what they were asking it generally went OK :-).

[Goose]

I don't ascribe to the bigger is better principle when it comes to student population unless the campus infrastructure is in place first (dorms, dining, classroom seats, labs, etc.)  Also I feel the requirements for Stanford TA's should be upgraded.  Too many student TA's simply aren't that good at being class instructors.

Agreed...I hate to say it, but I did not have a great experience in some upper-level classes where my TAs had very limited command of the English language.  Did not make complex concepts easier to understand.

I had a professor for Stat 116 that did not speak English. I mean it literally. His lectures were totally unintelligible. He also couldn't work many of the problems from the textbook because he couldn't understand them. He was a visiting professor from mainland China. I never had problems with TAs that didn't speak the language, although I can see how that could happen. I did however have quite a few TAs whose grasp of the material was questionable.
 
When I was a TA myself I did have problems with a few students whose grasp of English wasn't all that great, but we worked through that. This was a graduate EE course and the students involved were French speakers. I don't speak French, so it took some doing. These students did speak some English so we could communicate except for vocabulary limitations. Once I figured out what they were asking it generally went OK :-).