The Harvard Education: No Guarantee

Peer undergraduate grading of subjective work, a practice which occurs at Harvard College (see my column of two weeks ago), is indicative of a larger problem with the quality of undergraduate education at Harvard: Due to the small number of Faculty member and qualified teaching fellows relative to the number of students, finding quality instruction at Harvard College is not guaranteed. Instead, it is a task. Some students perform it very well, but for the many others who do not, a tradition of excellence--and not excellence itself--may be what they're getting for their money.

What undergraduates and their parents can never know about Harvard before they arrive on campus is what Harvard is actually like--and that despite its singular prestige, Harvard may not be the best place for them.

The College has the highest yield in the country of accepted students who attend (around 80 percent) because it is the oldest, most famous and richest institution of higher learning in the country. These characteristics have multiple implications: the Faculty consists of superior minds; the academic resources are unparalleled; the athletics program is well-funded; and the student body is split into overlapping categories: the brilliant or exceptionally talented; the very well-rounded or extremely ambitious; the children of the rich, connected, distinguished.

The stew which results form mixing these ingredients together is dynamic, sometimes astonishingly so. But the Harvard terrain can be very difficult to navigate, especially for those students who find themselves here without guidelines for the first time in their life, or who lack the great self-confidence of so many of their peers.

Indeed, it is not difficult for such students to fall through the cracks of this institution, in large part because the administration's unspoken message on Day One is this: "Welcome to Harvard University, an with a wealth of resources and possibilities you could only have dreamed of until now. We could have selected an equally good class from the pool of applicants we rejected, but we didn't. We chose you. Go, then, and fulfill our hopes for you. Take advantage of every opportunity you can by whichever means you deem necessary (within reason, please), and when you're done and you've seen how fantastic we really are, give us money as a show of appreciation, so that we can continue to deliver this message for another three and a half centuries. Good luck, and don't cry. It might get worse before it gets better, but you'll thank us in end."

Regarding academics, this attitude can be very harmful to undergraduates, because it means that quality instruction, broadly measured as the degree of intimate classroom interaction with members of the Faculty, must be sought. It is possible, of course, to find; and in some concentrations, like my own, it is easier to do so than it others. But in a variety of departments, from economics, governments, from economics, government and English to computer science and biology (not to mention the core Curriculum), advising and intimate learning environments are rare commodities.

There are students who beat the odds, who have figured out how to get professors to pay attention to them, and how to use Harvard's wealth to their best advantage. But for the many students in large concentrations who do not know how to work the system well, their educational experience is inferior to the one they could have gotten elsewhere--at Princeton, for example.

I went to high school in the town of Princeton, took a course at the university and lived approximately two minutes from campus. My decision not to attend Princeton, whose intimacy appealed to me very much at the time, was influenced by this great familiarity. What I realized in my first and second years here, though, is that Harvard is a fantastic, dynamic university, with unique opportunities; and that, contrary to what I believed as a senior in high school, Princeton would not have been the right place for me.

But over the last two semesters, as I have had to struggle to find guidance and quality instruction (even though I have been largely successful at it), I have begun again to see the benefits of attending a school where undergraduates are the priority. At Princeton, for example, every student writes a thesis and has a member of the faculty for a thesis adviser. Here, "shadow tutors" are par for the course.

The main issue here is attitude. The Harvard administration has a bad one where its undergraduates are concerned--because it can. Students will never stop wanting to come here no matter how poorly the College treats its students. And things aren't that bad anyway, right? To some degree, yes. Things are pretty good for most and excellent for some. But for an equal number, the cracks are large enough to fall through and the education they receive is not worth $130,000. (The diploma might be, but that's another article.)

Harvard should improve the quality of our education--for starters, by hiring more Faculty, limiting class size, increasing the number of Core offerings and providing quality advising to everyone, not just to those who seek it--for the same reason it doesn't have to--because it can. Where there's a will there's a way, particularly when you have $13 billion in capital; the fact that the University spent 3 percent of its endowment last year, however (over $100 million less than its own stated goal of between 4 and 5 percent), shows that the will simply isn't there.

If I had to choose again I would still choose Harvard. On the whole I've been happy with the quality of my education here. But I have also had my share of teaching fellows (particularly in the Core) who, to put it simply, should not be teaching me, who compromise my education.

Like many things in life, the quality of undergraduate education at Harvard could be better than it is. The difference in this case is that there is no good reason why it isn't. The availability of excellence at Harvard College is not compensation enough for those students here who have been unable to find it and profit from It.

Daniel M. Suleiman '99 is a social studies concentrator in Leverett House. His column appears on alternate Tuesdays.