Harvard Students Less Satisfied Than Peers With Undergraduate Experience, Survey Finds

Prevalent stereotypes about how Harvard undergraduates have less fun than their peers found empirical confirmation Tuesday, when the Boston Globe reported that Harvard students gave lower ratings to their college experience than students at other elite schools in a 2002 survey.

An internal Harvard memo analyzing data from the survey found that Harvard students rated their overall satisfaction at 3.95 on a five-point scale, compared to an average of 4.16 at the 30 other schools surveyed, the Globe reported on Tuesday. Harvard students gave lower ratings than peers to the level of interaction with faculty members and the quality of social life.

This satisfaction rating placed Harvard fifth from the bottom in the survey of the 31 colleges comprising the Consortium on Financing Higher Education (COFHE). The COFHE includes all eight Ivy League schools, other top research universities like MIT and Stanford University, and leading small liberal arts colleges like Amherst College and Williams College.

Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 said the issues raised by the data guided his priorities when he first assumed his post in July 2003.

“That’s exactly what we’ve been focusing on for the past three years,” he wrote in an e-mail.

According to the survey, Harvard averaged a 2.62 for its campus social life, compared to 2.89 across other schools, and netted a 2.53 for its sense of community, compared to 2.8 at other COFHE institutions, the Globe reported.

Gross noted that, in response to concerns about social life, administrators have taken steps such as expanding student activity space and extending party hours to 2 a.m.

Last fall, the College named Zachary A Corker ’04 to a newly-created position—special assistant to the dean for social programming—in an effort to expand campus-wide social opportunities. Corker has worked to coordinate events including the Harvard-Yale tailgate, two dodgeball tournaments, and a series of Loker Pub Nights.

Corker could not be reached for comment. Assistant Dean of the College Paul J. McLoughlin II, who oversees student life, declined to comment.

Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology Steven Pinker said he was surprised that students were unhappy with the social opportunities on campus when compared to peer institutions, especially given the thriving social scene in Boston.

“My impression is that the residential houses at Harvard are intended to provide some of the social opportunities that elsewhere would be provided college-wide,” Pinker wrote in an e-mail. “The intense student life of Boston, with its eight major universities and lively bar and music scene, should, I would think, obviate some of the need for students to get their social and cultural needs met on the Harvard campus.”

And while Adams House Committee Chair Connie Zong ’06 credited the administration with taking significant strides to improve student social life, she also attributed the possible differences between Harvard and other institutions to the level of student initiative at Harvard.

“We’re all really busy, and it takes a lot of time to work through the bureaucratic red tape of both the school and the city to organize any large social event,” she wrote in an e-mail.

The data, the most recent available for comparison, was outlined in a memo sent from Harvard researchers to deans that was dated Oct. 2004 and marked “confidential,” according to the Globe. The memo noted that the difference in student satisfaction ratings between Harvard and other institutions is not new phenomena—it has existed since at least 1994.

The poll analysis indicated that Harvard also fell behind other schools by a small margin in faculty availability, quality of instruction, and quality of advising, the Globe reported.

Faculty availability at Harvard averaged a 2.92 compared to an average of 3.39 at peer institutions, quality of instruction received a 3.16 rating compared to 3.31 at other schools, and quality of advising within majors netted a 2.54 compared to a 2.86 at other COFHE schools, the Globe reported.

Kenan Professor of Government Harvey C. Mansfield ’53 said that these results did not surprise him.

“Nobody can say that Harvard students are complacent. I think their intelligence makes them critical,” he said.

Mansfield—one of the most outspoken critics of the Harvard faculty—laid the blame for these results at the faculty’s feet.

“I think the administration has commitment to improving Harvard, but I don't think the majority of the faculty does,” he said. “They are the ones who are complacent and deserve most of the criticism.”

Cabot Professor of American Literature Lawrence Buell, the former dean of undergraduate education, noted that while the poll differences were marginal, Harvard still needed to work toward improving its undergraduate experience.

“Having spent the first half of my career teaching at one of the nation's liberal arts colleges and having before that received my A.B. from a competitor university where faculty on average were more intensively involved in undergraduate instruction and advising than is the case at Harvard even today, I am frankly not surprised by the survey results,” he wrote in an e-mail.

But he also noted that the results probably did not reflect those students who demonstrated exceptional brilliance and thus automatically attracted notice or those who took enough initiative outside the classroom to ensure close faculty contact.

Pinker praised University President Lawrence H. Summers’ attempts to address undergraduate concerns about faculty availability. Pinker has been one of Summers’ most vocal supporters recently.

“Larry Summers deserves credit for trying to fix the situation, both by encouraging faculty to interact with students, and by pledging to hire more faculty to reduce the professor-student ratio,” he wrote.

Attempts to remedy the relatively high student to faculty ratio have been in the works for some time. In 2000, then-Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles announced a plan to expand the Faculty by 10 percent over 10 years. But recently, Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby has said that he intends to outstrip the original growth goal of his predecessor. Kirby now plans to expand the faculty to 750 members by 2010, potentially reaching 800 after that.

Gross wrote that during his tenure, his administration has stressed student opportunities for faculty interaction such as freshman and junior seminars. Last year, Summers taught a freshman seminar that was limited to 16 or fewer students.

Gross added that the ongoing curricular review will look to address many of the other student complaints highlighted by the survey data.

"Many of the recommendations of the curricular review try to address student concerns that have appeared on our surveys," Gross wrote.

Gross wrote that those concerns include flexibility in choices for general education, more time to explore before choosing a concentration, more participation of faculty and peers in the advising process with greater coordination of academic and residential advising, and more opportunities for international experience.

But Higginson Professor of History and of East Asian Languages and Civilizations Philip A. Kuhn said that while he recognizes the efforts invested in the curricular review, he does not see how the review could solve the issue of faculty availability.

“Faculty generally enjoy student contact whether individually or in small groups; but despite the admirable Freshman Seminars, I fear that the large-class format is with us for the foreseeable future,” he wrote in an e-mail. “Under the demographics and economics of our present structure, I do not expect the Curricular Review to solve the problem, despite our best intentions.”

With Harvard’s admissions decisions set to be released this week, Director of Undergraduate Admissions Marlyn McGrath Lewis ’70-’73 said that it was too early to tell how the release of the survey data would affect the number of accepted students choosing to enroll at Harvard.

“We hope that students who are about to be admitted to Harvard will consider carefully their choices and will talk to individual students who are here and form their own conclusions,” she said. “When you talk with students who are here, you get a more nuanced picture.”

Summers and Kirby could not be reached for comment yesterday.

—Nicole B.Urken contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Margaret W. Ho can be reached at mwho@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Joshua P. Rogers can be reached at jprogers@fas.harvard.edu.