Can’t Concentrate? Lose the Double.

Former Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell, Class of 1877, once said: “A well-educated man must know a little bit of everything and one thing well.”

Today, many Harvard students know two things well — and nothing else.

Since double concentrations were introduced in 2022, the number of students pursuing them has skyrocketed. In 2023, almost one-third of Harvard’s Class of 2027 reported seeking a joint or double concentration. These numbers suggest that students are increasingly instrumentalizing their courses at the expense of a liberal arts education — and the College is abetting them.

Throughout its history, Harvard has flip-flopped on its undergraduate requirements. During the 19th century, almost all of a student’s courses were dictated by the faculty. President Charles W. Eliot, Class of 1853, pushed the pendulum in the opposite direction, doing away with all undergraduate requirements. His successor, Lowell, found a middle ground by creating the concentration system while allowing students to choose electives.

It’s unclear exactly when joint concentrations debuted. One article dates “Combined Concentration Fields” to at least 1937. (Only 44 out of 1,088 students that year pursued one.) Students gained the opportunity to earn secondaries in 2006. It is the double concentration, though, that has done the most damage in the least time.

I wouldn’t be the first to suggest that Harvard students have an optimization problem. Double concentrations only exacerbate this pressure, artificially incentivizing students to narrow their fields of study in order to receive an additional accreditation.

Truth be told, though, double concentrating isn’t necessarily more impressive. All Harvard undergrads must earn 128 credits to graduate. Double concentrators simply choose to take specific courses in lieu of others.

Even still, it logically follows that many students strive to maximize the credentials they receive from their coursework. If given the choice between taking a diverse array of electives versus taking specific classes in exchange for another certificate, why not choose the latter?

But double concentrations seem especially unnecessary at a school like Harvard, which offers students numerous avenues to combine multiple disciplines. Humanities students have History and Literature as well as History of Art and Architecture at their disposal, while students seeking the cliché combination of Government and Economics (and Anthropology, History, and Sociology) can declare Social Studies. Similarly, a History of Science concentrator can take courses throughout the sciences, social sciences, and humanities.

STEM students, meanwhile, have an abundance of options, including the interdisciplinary Integrative Biology degree and a whole host of compound-sentence concentrations, like Chemistry and Physics, Chemical and Physical Biology, and Molecular and Cellular Biology. There’s also Applied Mathematics, which can be allied with any one of 18 fields — no joint or double concentration needed.

And if any student is not thoroughly satisfied, they can design their own Special Concentration.

As the Class of 2028 declares their concentrations, I hope they remember that they need not exploit every ounce of their education. Rest assured, the most important part of their diploma will not be whether it has two concentrations but the big crimson name at the top.

However, it’s unlikely student culture will escape the iron cage it has created. So what can be done about these dastardly doubles?

A more concrete solution could be raising the bar for earning a double. Perhaps there should be an approval mechanism — either at the departmental or school-wide level — in which students have to show that their academic aspirations require a double concentration, and that a joint or secondary will not suffice.

However, rather than a purely regulatory measure, the course requirements may need to be increased — either for the concentrations themselves or the core curriculum. Given that so many students are double-concentrating, it may simply be too easy.

And if nothing else succeeds, the College could simply phase out double concentrations. Past writers have even gone as far as to propose abolishing concentrations altogether and returning to an Eliot-esque elective model.

Some may argue, though, that eliminating double concentrations will harm smaller departments. After all, the classic joke is that double concentrators pursue one concentration they want and one for their parents.

However, when doubles were proposed in 2022, some faculty actually believed they would harm smaller departments since double concentrators would take fewer electives. Since then, it seems doubles have done little to decelerate the decline in Harvard’s shrinking number of arts and humanities concentrators.

Additionally, one of the original sponsors of double concentrations, Dean of Undergraduate Education Amanda Claybaugh, anticipated that only a few students would actually use the option. Evidently, that isn’t the case.

As a double concentrator myself, I appreciate the irony of my writing this piece. However, this irony only underscores the fact that students should still be allowed to study whatever they want, even if that means filling all of their electives with just a single field. Indeed, I’m sure there are many students pursuing a double concentration whose interests in two different fields cannot be easily unified in a joint concentration nor satisfied by a mere secondary.

But the College should not bestow extra distinction on this coursework constriction — especially as increasing numbers of students are chasing this incentive. For most of the time that Harvard has had concentrations, students did just fine without doubles. We could, too.

So, to any sophomore debating on whether to declare a double concentration this month, please know that one concentration is enough.

Matthew R. Tobin ’27, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a double concentrator in Social Studies and Economics in Winthrop House.