Reinventing Harvard’s Teachers

If successful, the Harvard College Curricular Review will transform introductory courses from the narrowly focused Core designed to teach a “way of knowing” into a sweeping, interdisciplinary intellectual odyssey. In order to do so, however, changes must go beyond a mere shuffling of syllabi and involve fundamental changes in pedagogy. We believe this will require reform in Harvard’s stringent policies on hiring full-time teachers.

On this page, we have repeatedly maligned the Core Curriculum and endorsed the recommendation of the review’s Committee on General Education, in which students would be able to fulfill general education requirements either through a distribution requirement or through broad and integrative Courses in General Education. For all its faults, however, the Core does play to the strength of faculty in that it allows them to teach courses focused on their particular subtopics of interest. The biggest hurdle for these Courses in General Education will be finding faculty with the necessary interest and breadth to teach such wide-sweeping curricula.

That’s not to say such faculty don’t exist. Bass Professor of Government Michael J. Sandel’s Moral Reasoning 22, “Justice,” is the textbook example. But in many cases, students end up with team teaching—for example, Biological Sciences 56, which boasts four professors on top of a full staff of teaching fellows. Such courses lack continuity and are only as good as the weakest link.

The solution is simple: full-time teachers. It is no secret that the best researchers are not always the best teachers. By hiring top-notch teachers to look at the big picture of a course—particularly the new Courses in General Education—students would get courses that are better taught and organized. This is not to say that lecturers should assume responsibility for all courses; those faculty who are interested and have broad expertise should be encouraged to teach, and we certainly prefer that tenured faculty teach as many undergraduate courses as possible.

But when Harvard does not have a faculty member best suited to a course, there is no shame in turning to one of the best teachers in the world. In these cases, preceptors could still encourage professors to lecture as guests, but under the guidance of someone who can ensure the smooth administration of the overall course and its vision. Such a system would have the additional benefit of increasing faculty-student interaction by freeing up professors to teach smaller courses in which they have true interest. It would be foolish to expect the best faculty-student interaction in large lecture courses like the Courses in General Education.

This plan, however, has one large stumbling block: with a few exceptions for administrators who teach on the side, Harvard’s current policy limits lecturers in non-tenure-track positions to only eight years of teaching. Over the years, this rule has caused the departure of some top-quality talent—most recently Social Analysis 10 teaching fellow Bruce D. Watson and Preceptor in Mathematics John D. Boller. With a constant turnover of lecturers (and their teaching acumen), lecturers in charge of Courses in General Education would be little more than glorified head teaching fellows and would never have the time or incentive to fully invest themselves in the creation and improvement of a course. If Harvard College is to offer the best introductory courses in the world, this misguided policy should be changed.

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) administration defends the eight-year limit for two reasons. First, it prevents Harvard from exploiting post-doctoral fellows by indefinitely chaining them to the lectern, which, FAS claims, is not in the fellows’ best interest even if they want to teach at Harvard for longer. This paternalistic argument is misguided. Lecturers, who are fully aware of their relatively low compensation levels, can make their own decisions about their career choices. Those teachers who love what they do and are willing to give up more lucrative research careers are exactly the type of passionate instructors that Harvard should seek to attract.

Second, the eight-year rule institutionalizes the fact that the curriculum rests in the hands of Harvard’s regular faculty, not some permanent “lesser faculty.” While valid, this concern is not enough reason to impose an eight-year restriction. Instead, Harvard should adopt the same policy as Yale, Brown, and a number of other schools, which offer short contracts that can be renewed contingent on the school’s need and the lecturer’s performance, but with no expectation of long-term employment. This would allow Harvard to reap the benefits of having top-level teachers who are not constantly forced out by rules, while preventing the development of secondary faculty that effectively has tenure.

The curricular review’s proposals will plug gaping holes in Harvard’s curriculum by providing broad Courses in General Education. But if this plug is to be effective, the Faculty should increase the role of lecturers and repeal the eight year rule while it’s at it.