Realities of a Harvard Education

First in an occasional series on the Harvard Core Curriculum. Concluding its tenth year, the Core faces administrative review in a context of national debate over academic philosophy, and within inherent limits on undergraduate education set by a research-oriented faculty.

The incoming Class of 1993 was only seven-years-old when an era of 1960s-inspired liberal--some say anarchic--education came to an end at Harvard.

Now, 10 years later, the outcome of that conservative swing in the pendulum will be reviewed as Harvard's celebrated Core Curriculum undergoes a faculty and administrative review. While not expected to call for broad revision or fundamental change, the assessment will represent Harvard's latest statement on what makes an "educated person."

Administrators will study whether the Core courses--specifically tailored to fit a 1978 plan for providing a sound undergraduate education--succeed in teaching "modes of knowledge" and analysis of varying disciplines. But the review takes place amid continuing debate over the Core's fundamental premise of basing education on the "approaches to thinking" in a loose ordering of disciplines.

And having taken a stand opposed to critics on the academic right, who call for greater educational structure, and to those on the left, who call for more freedom, the Core still faces the question of whether it fulfills its own promises to students pursuing a Harvard diploma.

President-Elect Bok Holds a Meeting

Harvard's first formal review of undergraduate education since 1945 began in 1971 with a quiet meeting between then President-elect Bok and then-Professor of Economics Henry Rosovsky. Two years later, Rosovsky took over as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) with a mandate for curricular reform.

His solution appeared in 1978 in a plan hoped to counteract the damaging laissez-faire legacy of the 1960s. A Harvard curriculum liberated by a decade of student unrest--following a trend that had swept colleges from coast to coast--had become by the mid-1970s incoherent and "soft", offering courses such as "the aesthetics of film comedy" and "the civilization of continental and island Portugal" to fulfill humanities requirements, according to a contemporary article in the Saturday Review.

The Core Program, heir to the World War II-era General Education requirement, was implemented after years of planning and deliberation to re-form the centerpiece of Harvard undergraduate education along more structured lines.

Replacing the 10-odd Gen Ed course requirements split between the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, the Core introduced the notion of teaching "approaches to knowledge" in more specific areas including foreign studies, the arts, and "social and philosophical" reasoning. The Core's philosophy has been translated by administrators to mean non-departmental courses focusing not so much on facts as analysis, not so much on teaching a distribution requirement as teaching a "form of inquiry."

No longer would a Harvard graduate, it was reasoned, earn his or her diploma without encountering the reasoning--if not the works--of thinkers such as Plato and Shakespeare, Newton and Picasso, Bolivar and Machiavelli.

Showing Signs of Age

But in 1989, many believe the Core has not completely met its broad educational aims. A frequent target for criticism is the Core's science content. In an otherwise rosy accreditation review last year, the New England Association of Schools and Colleges found Harvard's Quantitative Reasoning Requirement (QRR) superficial and criticized the absence of math in the Core.

"There is a general feeling that as we move into the twenty-first century, future citizens should know more science than the Core demands," says Dean of the Division of Applied Sciences (DAS) Paul C. Martin '52.

Currently, two courses in science are required by the Core. Students with adequate high school records may petition to drop one of these.

The position taken by Martin, who is the van Vleck professor of pure and applied physics and an ex-officio Core committee member, remains closely aligned to that taken by Harvard science professors 11 years ago. In a DAS straw-poll two months before the Core was approved in May, 1978, science faculty voted against the Core 23-3. The professors charged that the plan downplayed the importance of science and technology.

The computer and analytical requirement QRR--dismissed by several generations of Harvard students--has also been attacked for its shallow treatment in comparison with the computer revolution in industry and research in the 1980s.

"One of the possibilities is that there should be a whole different Core area devoted to QRR," says Hollis Professor of Mathematics Andrew M. Gleason, head of the QRR subcommittee. "We could have a larger mandate, a situation under which we are not operating under an extracurricular basis, as we are now."

The QRR will be one area covered by the review, says Core director Susan W. Lewis.

Another problem that might surface, Lewis says, is of more immediate concern to students: class size. While new courses are always being developed and new faculty recruited to the Core, getting professors to teach is often difficult.

"For many faculty members, to teach in the Core is to commit an unnatural act," says Professor of Government Jorge I. Dominguez, who heads the Foreign Cultures subcommittee, one of eight that make up the Core Committee.

"It is a lot easier to teach concentrators. You do not have to worry about the motivational aspect. You do not have to explain the subject matter."

The Subject of Review

In this year's review, faculty and administrator subcommittees will survey Core professors and section leaders. Professors' satisfaction with teaching, their problem issues in handling Core courses and adequate section education of students in what are frequently large lecture classes will also be studied. And section leaders will be asked to review their courses and professors.

Students will be surveyed through old CUE reviews and through the two undergraduate members on each committee.

"It is an attempt to stand back and review whether the Core is accomplishing what it was supposed to do and how well it is doing it," says Lewis.

Underlying Issues of Philosophy

But members of the Core Committee say that, despite criticism from some educators nationwide, they believe the underlying philosophy of the Core will not likely be changed.

"We are not about to recommend that the Core be abandoned," says Dominguez. "It is not because we forgot to consider the question, but that we decided that [although] it is not a perfect system, [it is] better than the alternatives."

Former Education Secretary William J. Bennett in 1986 tagged the program "Core lite," comparing the curriculum to its Gen Ed predecessor and assailing it for not being academically rigid.

A proper core, according to the outspoken critic of much of American higher education, should provide a systematic familiarization with "our own, Western tradition of learning: with the Classical and Jewish-Christian heritage, the facts of American and European history, the political organization of Western societies, the literature, [and] the major achievements of the scientific disciplines."

Harvard administrators resist the notion of a Western Civilization core, or a curriculum designed to distribute education among departmental courses.

"These courses aren't designed to teach you about the five most important books ever written," says Lewis. "They are to get you to look and think critically about whatever it is, whether it is a piece of art, a book, a poem, a philosophical question."

"Simply putting emphasis on the facts is not very sensible," says Rosovsky. "You have to prepare the mind to deal with change without emphasis on certain facts."

At the opposite extreme, some liberal educators question the value of imposing a universal curriculum for students. It would be impossible to define a "single program of study that is good for everyone," says Dean of Brown College Sheila E. Blumstein, given the variation of student abilities and interests.

Blumstein says a core, absent at Brown, takes away from students the decision of what constitutes a liberal education.

Harvard faculty remain unconvinced. "We could drop the course catalogue in your lap and say, 'We have good courses, and a good faculty. Educate yourself,'" says Dominguez. "The Core is like a Valentine's Day card. It says we care about you more than that."

"In the future, life-time learning will be more important. The Core is meant to provide you a basic approach toward becoming an educated person," says Rosovsky. "Everyone should have an informed acquaintance and practical appreciation of the major ways to gain knowledge."

Pragmatic Concerns at Harvard

But often overlooked in the philosophical debate are the pragmatic requirements imposed by Harvard's powerful faculty.

Educators at institutions such as Columbia University and University of Chicago agree that creating a strong undergraduate curriculum of small courses and broad learning demands a faculty dedicated to that end.

"[Harvard faculty members] are more involved with their particular corners of the field," says Columbia Professor of Russian Robert L. Belnap. "It takes a faculty more involved with the overall picture" of liberal arts to create a program like Columbia's "Contemporary Civilization" curriculum.

That program requires students to take two year-long courses, "Humanities" and "Contemporary Civilization," which teach students about literary and philosophical writers central to the Western tradition.

Belnap also says that Columbia's survey courses provide educational benefits for the faculty who teach them.

"My specialty is Dostoevsky, but the fact I have to read Homer and Dante every year makes me a better scholar than I ever was," Belnap says.

Such a system would not work at research-oriented Harvard, says Belnap, because faculty do not wish to spend time in the classroom outside their specialty.

Dominguez agrees, saying that at Harvard, where scholarship is crucial to gain tenure, professors tend to confine themselves to specific areas of study and to teach concentrators and graduate students.

But Dominguez says the very breadth of the Core sometimes brings professors unexpected benefits.

Without the Core, Harvard's faculty might "retreat to their departments and their research," Dominguez says. Professors reluctant to teach Core courses may gain new academic perspectives by extending into related areas, he says.

Meanwhile, University of Chicago Dean Ralph W. Nicolas says that creating small classes also depends on a university's will.

"We believe more in discussion than in lectures," at Chicago, Nicolas says, "More time with faculty members in small classes has always been our particular way of doing things here."

Chicago undergraduates must take four year-long courses in the humanities, social sciences, biological sciences and physical sciences.

"It is a pretty intensive program," the dean says. "It guarantees that all students in the college will have a common ground for discussion."

But Nicolas says that though "it is the right program for our university," the program might not work in other institutions.

But Geyser University Professor Rosovsky, founder and father of the Core, says he thinks the choice made possible by Harvard's large faculty is one of its most important attributes, even a decade after its beginning.

"There are very few universities that have as large and varied a faculty. I view choice as a very good thing as long as the educational purpose is fulfilled. I think it is a great plus to have faculty teach in areas they really care about."

Next, what students think