No CUE for You

For the past three weeks, Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71, professors, teaching fellows (TFs), and many of our peers have exhorted us to fill out the Committee on Undergraduate Education (CUE) evaluations of our courses. But apparently the deluge of spam, combined with all the other incentives FAS dreamt up (including course instructors’ promising to don fairy costumes on exam day and extra points on the final) have been insufficient in motivating Harvard students to respond. As of Friday, only 50.55 percent of students had completed the evaluations.

Harvard has dangled plenty of carrots in its quest to get students to fill out CUE evaluations, but those efforts have not worked. Now, instead of bribes of sugarplums such as extra funding for the House with the highest response rate, Harvard should rethink how to make the CUE most useful to students and use a stick to hold those accountable who do not participate.

With that in mind, we propose that Harvard abandon the print edition model of the CUE and restrict access to the online edition only to those who had filled out their CUE forms the semester before (or pro-actively opted-out) and to new students. In addition, Harvard should post verbatim feedback of students—edited only for profanity and obscenity—directly on the online edition.

Such a reformulation accomplishes two important ends: first, publishing comments makes the CUE more interesting and informative. Too often CUE reviews of completely dissimilar classes offering completely differing experiences read the same. CUE reports lack color; publishing the text of comments, anonymously and with the option to opt-out, will make the CUE the riveting read that course evaluations should be.

Second, a response rate as low as this year’s takes an incomplete view of courses and hurts the quality of the CUE guide. Restricting access to the CUE will give students who use the CUE guide a concrete interest participating rather than a vague sense of obligation or hope of winning that elusive free iPod.

For a student body so loud in its complaints about its TFs and workloads, Harvard students this year have proven remarkably apathetic in constructively criticizing their courses. Only half were willing to take time out of reading period to provide valuable feedback for professors and administrators. It’s time to rethink the CUE, and Harvard can start by offering a better product and holding accountable those who fail to contribute to it.