Seniors Working on Ec Theses Criticize Mandatory Seminars

Many Economics concentrators writing senior theses yesterday criticized the department's new required seminars for thesis writers, calling them boring, time-consuming and irrelevant to their research efforts.

Students and tutors in the department yesterday said that, although Economics 985, "Junior Senior Research Seminars," might help students with inaccessible advisers, the course is unnecessary for most thesis writers.

"For two hours a week, which many students think they could use better on their own, one student presents his thesis on a topic most students know nothing about and then the professor asks him questions, while the other students are left out," Joseph Z. Cortes '81, an Economics concentrator and president of the Harvard Student Economics Association, said yesterday.

Donald W. Walls, head tutor in Economics, said yesterday the department created Economics 985 this year to "improve the quality of the senior thesis experience and to increase student-faculty contact."

The "Industrial Organization and Regulation" section of the course is "most problematic" because it includes more than 25 students with diverse backgrounds and interests and gives each one very little individual attention, an Economics teaching fellow who asked not to be identified said yesterday. The course "works in theory, but doesn't in practice," he added.

Harold Holzer, assistant head tutor in charge of senior theses in Economics, said yesterday he has "heard no major complaints, other than a lot of negative reaction to being graded at midyear."

The department "should give stricter guidelines to professors" about thesis advising to alleviate the problem of faculty inaccessibility, Daniel C. Esty '81 said, adding "The present format of the course is not very good."