Virtual Veritas

I hate to break it to the supposed premier educational institution of the world, but many Harvard teachers just plain stink. The problem is especially acute in the sciences, where faculty members are almost exclusively recruited for their research prowess, with little regard for teaching credentials. Thus, while almost no one would doubt that the scientific expertise of our faculty is first-rate, the ability to teach—to impart information quickly, effectively, lucidly and entertainingly—by no means correlates with this zeal for research. The result is a faculty that spans the entire gambit of teaching quality, from abysmal to spectacular, with a mean hovering at mediocre.

As faculty members continue to be recruited for a characteristic that doesn’t correlate with their teaching ability, the inscrutable selection criteria the admissions board uses to divine those fit to walk these overly hallowed halls produces students more equipped to learn, more hungry for knowledge and more self-sufficient. Although the selection process is far from perfect, I daresay that given the ever-expanding pool of driven students, the admissions committee can’t help but recruit better and better entering classes.

Thus we have a strange situation in the lecture halls of many science classes: an overly qualified student body and an under-qualified pool of teachers. What results is largely a product of the drive of many of these science students; they pick up the slack. When given a sub-par teacher, as they often are, they make up for the inability of teachers to impart knowledge by reading supplementary books, studying with other students, getting tutored, going to a section-leader’s office hours—whatever it takes. The drive toward knowledge and the almost infinite reserves of energy of many Harvard students allows them to use sheer brute force to hobble their way through horrible teaching experiences and come out with knowledge in the end.

In many respects, it is not Harvard as a teaching institution that makes students here successful, but rather the selection criteria and applicant pool that allow highly motivated, upwardly mobile students to attend—students who will succeed anyway—and allow Harvard to ride its students’ coattails to name recognition. Harvard maintains its “greatness” through its social momentum, a culturally ingrained self-fulfilling prophecy. People believe Harvard provides an excellent education and that this education is what allows for success, when in reality much of the success that Harvard students enjoy is a result of their own effort and is actively hindered by teaching incompetence. But the belief of Harvard pedagogical superiority persists as the next round of unwitting students applies and is accepted.

Hopefully, MIT’s recent move toward open-market education will create a whole new way of learning for tomorrow’s bright, motivated students. Instead of being saddled with Harvard’s “laboratory geniuses,” they might instead peruse the online lectures of other colleges, digest the notes of the “classroom geniuses,” and efficiently retain and comprehend information. In the short term, this form of information exchange will allow for yet another resource to supplement where the Harvard experience lacks.

But in the long term, the concept of an open market of idea transfer services is not just another small perk of the wired world, but could constitute an educational revolution. As students become able to choose the lecturer they like best from an array of possibilities, market forces might actually place a premium on the skills of imparting knowledge. Great teachers might actually be in demand, valued for their rare skills, and might start to be rewarded proportionately to their immense contribution to society. And for students, instead of being forced to take on the responsibility of their education themselves by an institution that cares more about its research reputation than its quality of teaching, they might be able to reap the rewards of an open market of lectures, notes, styles of teaching and material.

Harvard too should join in this movement and release its educational materials to the public via the web, helping to usher in the (hopefully) coming revolution. At best, this move might force the administration to reassess the importance of teaching credentials in its faculty recruiting procedures to pre-empt empty lecture halls, students having chosen to imbibe their information elsewhere online, or to prevent the world from viewing some of the almost laughably poor lecturers who grace the venerated science departments. At worst, this burgeoning open market of information transfer specialists might signal Harvard’s first step toward obsolescence. But maybe that wouldn’t be so bad…

B.J. Greenleaf ’01 is a physics concentrator in Mather House. His column appears on alternate Tuesdays.