Worthy Goal, Misguided Plan

NO ONE SHOULD have been disappointed last week when the dean of the Faculty questioned the practicality of an Undergraduate Council plan to give students a formal role in tenure deliberations. The council's goal--to make sure teaching ability gets due consideration when tenure candidates are evaluated--is a worthy one. By taking it up the council has earned a measure of respect. But, as the dean suggested to the council in his careful, deanly way, the current plan is a misguided one.

It calls for select groups of students to join Harvard's full professors, leading experts from outside, and the University's president in discussing the professional attainments of scholars bidding for tenure. Unfortunately for the plan's future, however, Harvard faculty members are quite confident of their fitness to direct the development of their own academic fields and jealously guard appointments even against leading colleagues elsewhere when they take an interest in Harvard appointments. And if outside experts aren't often welcomed, how can the council seriously suggest that undergraduates be invited to take part? The plan's greatest effect likely will be to dispose the powers that be against involving undergraduates in areas where they have valuable insight.

The council, though, is justifiably disturbed by the parade of highly regarded teachers who have left Harvard junior posts to distinguish themselves as full professors at other schools. This trend has motivated Dean of the Faculty A. Michael Spence to make tenuring Harvard's own top young scholars a top priority, and the Faculty recognizes that its future strength may depend on the dean's success. The challenge now is for Harvard to identify outstanding ability--both, faculty members say, in research and teaching--early in a scholarly career.

That is why the council is in a position to exert careful but effective influence on tenure decisions. The council, with its substantial authority over the CUE course evaluation guide, controls the apparatus to compile and present information about the teaching ability of junior professors when they come up for tenure. The faculty already uses the guide informally in tenure considerations. Now, the council should devote effort to making CUE evaluations useful to tenure reviewers, and the faculty should make clear to all teachers that they have a responsibility to submit to CUE review. Maybe students shouldn't sit in on faculty meetings, but no professor should object to them sitting in on classes.

If that were to happen the CUE's importance to the careers of Harvard junior professors would increase, giving the junior professors (and maybe some full professors, too) more motivation than they currently have to make teaching, course development and interaction with students prime concerns. Compiling and analyzing information about junior professors is less attractive than joining professors on powerful committees. But the former tact may actually yield results.