Lewis Report Signals Problems

Earlier this year, Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68 released a report on the state of the school and its progress over the last five years. Detailed and heavy on statistics, Lewis' report identified several major areas for future improvements. While all of these areas will require future discussion, two that should be considered immediately are academic advising and undergraduate housing space.

Lewis identified and applauded many departments--such as History and Literature, Social Studies and History of Science--whose advising programs have consistently received high marks from graduating seniors. But the wildly disparate quality of advising from department to department presents a particularly alarming concern at an academic institution such as Harvard.

Compared to other Ivy League schools, Harvard already has a poor reputation nationally for paying little attention to its undergraduates. And when only a third of students in the Government Department, one of the school's largest concentrations, spoke with their academic advisors about appropriate classes to take, one has to ask whether these departments are even trying to improve the undergraduate experience.

Larger departments have a natural handicap in meeting the kind of personal advising and mentoring many smaller departments offer, but that is no excuse for their apathy. As Lewis has noted in the past, departments can improve their advising even with a limited faculty-student ratio. The Department of English and American Literature and Language has made a number of reforms since 1997, assigning each student a permanent Faculty adviser and placing responsibility for undergraduate studies in the hands of a member of the senior Faculty. Failing departments--the sciences, government and economics, among others--should look to their successful counterparts for similar means to remedy their abysmal records.

Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles has seconded Lewis' conclusion that Harvard students are owed "the best education we can provide." Knowles and Lewis must take the lead in pressuring failing departments (through repeated public criticism as well as the FAS budgetary process) to change their policies. The Faculty and administration can also assist the departments by seeking out tenure candidates who are willing and eager to advise students, not merely to hide themselves away in libraries and labs. But we reiterate that departments need not wait on the tenure process to fix their advising systems; past failures in advising can no longer be tolerated as justifications for continued negligence.

While advising issues are mainly limited to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, space constraints are being felt throughout the University. For undergraduates, living space has become increasingly tighter. In his report, Lewis identified House overcrowding as a major area for improvement, but some of the alternatives he noted do not appear to be viable long-term solutions.

There are only two fundamental ways of addressing problems of overcrowding: cut people or add space. Unless Harvard wants to reduce the size of its entering class, it must either obtain additional apartment space, expand existing Houses or build a thirteenth House. The latter, though expensive, would at least avoid increasing the size of the already large Houses and further compromising the sense of community within them. Adding more beds to overflow housing like the DeWolfe complex does not address the underlying problem of crowding; it only shuffles students around. Another proposal noted in the report, to encourage 100 more students to take a semester or year abroad, is even more fanciful. Harvard already balances students leaving to study abroad with transfer admissions, so shipping more students overseas will not help unless the College resolves not to bring in more transfer students. Furthermore, if Harvard is serious about promoting study abroad, it must make it easier for students to obtain credit for foreign study, creating a study-abroad program comparable to other major universities.

Besides residential space, the need for meeting and office space for student groups remains. Lewis has long noted the frustrating shortfall in student group space but unfortunately has not echoed undergraduates' calls for a student center. Such a center would be more than the "gathering place with soft couches, pizzas and big screen TVs" that Lewis dismisses; by bringing student groups together rather than dispersing them among the Houses, it would help build the kind of community that Harvard has consistently sought after randomization.

While noting Harvard's successes, Lewis' report has also clearly identified substantial and long-term difficulties that the College must face. Lewis, Knowles and the central administration should take this report as a signal to action. With aggressive and thoughtful solutions, Harvard can significantly improve the undergraduate experience.