Terrible Tutelage

With study cards now turned in, and classes now revving up, it has again become clear that the current system of tutors serving as academic advisors is abysmal. Students are not receiving the necessary and critically important advice they need on topics ranging from class selection to plans for after college. These problems, however, run far deeper than the tutors themselves; rather, they stem predominantly from the shortcomings of the current tutor system and selection process. The existing selection procedures pit Houses against each other as they battle for the most talented tutors. Students inevitably suffer from these fights because their House loses strong tutors to another House. Instead of fiercely competing, Houses should be working together to help each other meet their needs. This kind of cooperation would be a tremendous improvement, benefiting students in every House.

Presently, there are serious problems in the distribution of tutors covering concentrations. For example, Cabot House has no resident Economics tutor, and Leverett lacks a resident Government tutor. Spreading out tutors across concentrations is made even more difficult by the significant turnover that occurs each year—some Houses have as much as 50 percent of their tutors leaving at the end of a year. Moreover, tutors also leave during the academic year, hurting those students whom the tutor advised. Eliot House, for instance, is losing their Economics tutor and therefore has been forced to actively recruit students from the Economics Department to fill the void.

All of this hurts undergrads because it limits the advice they can receive. And, non-resident tutors or concentration department advisors cannot serve as replacements. Many non-resident tutors are conspicuously absent from their assigned Houses, and department advising is a much more formal process than the suggestions that House tutors are supposed to dispense. House tutors are intended to give advice in a much more casual way. They are supposed to be the ones who can tell you which professors to avoid and how to balance your schedule. They are also the people whom students can chat with about possible career ideas. House tutors can share their experiences with students about jobs and internships they had. They can describe what medical school or law school is like, and they can do all of this in a much more open and laid-back way than the Office of Career Services or concentration tutors. But if there are not tutors in the area of a student’s interest, then that student cannot have these types of discussions, and he or she suffers for it.

However, no House can have a tutor in every subject. Each House generally has 17 to 20 resident tutors, and there are roughly 40 concentrations, making a residential tutor for every field impossible. But if Houses were to share their tutors with those Houses in their immediate proximity, then students could have easy access to someone in their field. Simply put, the Houses should be formed into zones of three Houses each that collaborate with each other to ensure that most, if not all, fields are covered by the Houses’ collective tutors. The zones would be as follows: Adams, Quincy, and Lowell; Winthrop, Eliot, and Kirkland; Leverett, Dunster, and Mather; and Currier, Pforzheimer, and Cabot. Since the House masters and senior tutors in each of these zones would have to work together on tutor selection, each zone would have a zone-specific application. The Houses could choose to add any supplements to this that they might like.

With the Houses in each zone pooling resources, students would be assured that they would have a tutor to advise them in one of three Houses in their zone. At the same time, the new selection process would not detract from House life. Resident tutors are crucial to forming a distinctive community within each House, and in no way should the character of each House be homogenized. The zoning procedure, however, still gives Houses great autonomy, allowing them to maintain House personality, and at the same time, helping them better meet the academic needs of students. Furthermore, this new selection process would not burden tutors with too many rigid requirements. Rather, it would continue to allow tutors to serve as young intellectuals, exploring their own interests and sharing stories about their endeavors with undergrads. The only difference for tutors would be that they would interact with more students, something no one can criticize.

The proposed reform would not be difficult to achieve, and should be implemented as quickly as possible. Ideally, Houses would adopt these changes this year, as Houses cannot notify prospective tutors before Feb. 28. But even if this is not feasible, Houses should strive next year to work more collaboratively in the tutor selection process. Certainly, the tutor system is not the be all and end all of academic advising. Many other changes need to take place such as reviving a largely defunct student advisory system, where upperclassmen would offer recommendations to fellow students—a move that administrators are fortunately considering in the Curricular Review. But the creation of House zones would greatly improve academic advising, and would do so with little to no cost to House life. All students, regardless of House, should be able to speak with a resident tutor in their field. But until the tutor selection process is changed, many students will continue to suffer.