Over-Concentration

Dean Ford suggested recently that pressures in the departmental Honors system which seem to push students toward "over-concentration" could be attenuated. He called for discussion of whether this should be done. The problem is that many students feel that to do well on General and Special senior exams, they must have a knowledge of their field well beyond that demanded by departmental requirements.

The obsession with Generals stems from the heavy weight the grade carries in the ratio used to compute departmental Honors. Honors, in turn, are no longer simply an indication of specific achievement. They have become disproportionately important to students, chiefly because so many graduate schools are guided by them. More than half of Harvard's graduates now go on to further study. Students interested in courses outside their field take them at the risk of lowering their departmental Honors status. Unless they wish to graduate with a Cum Laude in General Studies, good work in outside courses remains unconsidered. Only departmental grades count toward Cum Laude and Magna Cum Laude degrees.

Open Scope of Inquiry?

The encouragement to over-concentrate as an undergraduate would seem particularly unfortunate in a College most of whose students go on to graduate school. Specialized training will come after college; shouldn't the scope of inquiry be kept open here?

If the Committee on Educational Policy and the departments considered broadening the base of the Cum and Magna degrees, the push toward over-concentration could be controlled without upsetting the basic concept of departmental Honors. This could be done by making outside grades one of the components in the ratio used to compute Honors, stipulating, possibly, that it constitute one sixth of the total. Thus a department which counted department grades 2, Generals 2, and thesis 1 would add a fourth category: Outside grades, 1.

Considering outside grades in awarding Honors is not a new concept at Harvard. It is part of the procedure with Summa Cum Laude degrees. But at least one practical difficulty remains with the formula outlined above: "While it rewards a student for work outside his field, it may also destroy the record of, say, an adventurous English concentrator who decided to take a physics course. In this case the formula would narrow the educational scope it set out to widen.

Optional Course Component

One way to avoid this difficulty would be to make the outside-course component in the Honors ratio optional. It would be included in computing departmental Cum and Magna degrees unless detrimental to the student's Honors standing. This does not mean a student could pick and choose which outside grades would be used in this component of the ratio and which would not. Outside grades would be considered as a group: they would either be counted or discarded together.

The proposed formula is not a neat or simple one, but neither is the problem of over-concentration simple. Any solution must aim at encouraging those students who over-concentrate out of fear, rather than out of genuine interest, to investigate fields other than their own. If the formula sketched out above seems unacceptable, another should be sought. The important thing is that the CEP and the College's departments join in the discussion Dean Ford has proposed.