Screwing Up Courage

DAVID PILBEAM began his tenure as head of the Committee on Undergraduate Education on the right note last week when he announced that the quality of academic advising will be among his top concerns. The six students who sit with six faculty members on the committee rightly welcomed the announcement, and Evan J. Mandery '89, Undergraduate Council chairman and CUE representative, said he hoped a "model system" of advising could be set up this year.

The fact remains, though, that Harvard's system of academic advising reflects the University's strengths and weaknesses, that many of the greatest "problems" of both are the inevitable consequence of resources overwhelming to virtually any undergraduate. Most of the vexation students experience when they seek advice here doesn't have to do with shortcomings of what's available. It has to do with the the frustrations of finding out what's available--and with screwing up the courage to walk into some professor's office and ask the basic questions academics entered university life, at least in part, to answer. It should be easier for students to find the sources of information that now lurk behind platoons of department secretaries, deputy assistant head tutors and signs listing each professor's four weekly office hours.

The student CUE members seem to feel strongly that the best way to make sense of the mess would be to draw senior faculty members into it. No one who's spent an unproductive hour with a grad student as absorbed in his own work as any professor would disagree. Unfortunately, the CUE could never force tenured members of the Harvard faculty to take on more of the advising burden than they want to.

The CUE would be remiss not to provide professors with the obligatory exhortations to get more involved with students. Of course those exhortations have been made lots of times. It might be interesting to see who has listened. Why doesn't CUE find out, for instance, how many senior theses various professors advise--and publish the results for all to see? Peer pressure might provide more effective motivation for take-it-easy profs than the shrill pronouncements of a student-faculty committee.

By making that and other types of information on advising available to students, CUE would complete a daunting task. And, in the end, the thing that makes the most practical difference to students in need of advice is knowledge enough of what's available to go out and use it. Whether advice is taken advantage of or not is each student's responsibility, and each student's problem.