Junior Theses

To much is crammed into a senior year at Harvard. Applications to graduate school, decisions on a career, official responsibilities in student groups, general examinations, and finally a thesis all accumulate on top of the normal course load.

It is true that there are departments without senior generals or with light thesis requirements, and there are seniors who do not go to graduate school. But though some seniors may be able to breeze through the year without cracking a book, others find not a leisurely culmination of their undergraduate careers, but a series of deadlines to beat.

The Economics Department plans to allow its concentrators to write their theses in the junior year, thus reducing this clutter of obligations for harassed seniors. Just as importantly, its plan will rescue firmly-decided concentrators who take Ec 1 as freshmen from passing a year in limbo before they enter Ec 98. Students regularly attack sophomore tutorial as pointless, disorganized, or simply useless.

Economics is not the only department which could profitably allow sophomores to take junior tutorial and then write theses the following year. Already, Social Relations is considering letting sophomores into junior tutorial.

Admittedly, this concept would demand a special breed of student. As a freshman, he would have to be solidly convinced of his field of concentration. He would have to have the expository skill to write a lengthy paper without the benefit of an extra year's experience. He would have to take enough departmental courses in his first two years to be able to choose and research a thesis topic intelligently. But such students do exist.

Advanced standing students now carry out this three-year program. Many of them remain a fourth year to do independent study. The junior thesis-writer would also have this opportunity senior year. And just as advanced standing is limited to a select group of students, only a certain number of exceptional freshman should be allowed to opt for an early thesis. A voluntary test, posibly a long research paper, could be given at the end of the freshman year to determine which of the applicants were qualified for the accelerated program.

Junior thesis-writers would be able to test the proposition that senior year is the best time for General Education. The new Gen Ed program makes this approach more practicable; after all, the senior who might feel sheepish about taking Hum 2 would be less reluctant to enroll in one of the new upper-level Gen Ed courses. The senior would also be able to use his liberated time to hear that one lecturer he'd always wanted to hear or to complete the extracurricular project he never had time for before.

If more departments consider the junior thesis idea, they should also re-examine how, important the thesis is and should be to an undergraduate. If it is written in the junior year, the grade will be available to graduate schools, putting even more pressure on the thesis-writer. But those who want to get their theses out of the way by the end of their junior years should be given a chance to do it.