College Questions 3,000 Parents

The College is beginning to collect surveys sent to parents of undergraduates in February.

A random sampling of 3,000 Harvard parents received the survey, which asks about their concerns and their experience with the College.

"It would be interesting to see from a parent's eyes how Harvard has met expectations or failed to meet expectations," said Thomas A. Dingman '67, associate dean of the college for human resources and the house system.

The survey was created by the Consortium on Financing Higher Education, a private company. Although the College authored some questions itself, most were written by the Consortium.

The Consortium's questions ask parents about how they obtain information from Harvard; their visits to Harvard; their interactions with offices and individuals; receptions for parents in their area; and their views on the college's success in academics, services and facilities, Dingman said.

According to Dingman, Harvard-written questions asked parents about University Health Services, the World Wide Web, admissions, financial challenges and fundraising.

The College has already received some responses, but it will not review the results until late April, according to Senior Consultant Barbara B. Carroll, Harvard's liaison for the survey.

"We want to learn how parents experience Harvard and then decide how we should respond in turn," Dingman said. "If parents feel that they lack certain information, we would talk internally about how to make them better informed."

A brief statement in the Harvard-Radcliffe Parents Newsletter read, "the survey questions deal with...the relationship [parents] have--or don't have--with [Harvard]."

Dingman also said the College issued the survey because administrators do not usually hear from parents of Harvard undergraduates.

Several parents said they had no intent to fill out the seven-page survey because it was too long.

"I thought it was too long and a bit of an imposition on our time," said a Harvard parent. The survey asked about 48 questions, she said, adding "Some of it was really not relevant."

Dingman said individual responses will not be linked to specific parents or students, even though the respondents' addresses are printed on the return envelope.