Consumer Education

Just before finals in the spring of my junior year, one of my tutorial leaders went M.I.A. I had been working madly for the previous week to finish an experiment whose write up would be my final paper for the course. Since I had never really written up an experiment like this, he was firm about the need for me to send him a draft so that he could give me feedback on it. The morning it was due, I e-mailed it to him. I heard nothing from him that first day, and the next I e-mailed to make sure that he had actually received it. He replied that he had, and that he would try to send me comments “shortly.” I never heard from him again.

I sent a couple of e-mails gently inquiring as to whether he had everything he needed from me but got no reply. Finals period came and went.

At this point, I could only imagine that something had happened—perhaps something personal, some sort of family crisis—and I certainly didn’t want to harass him if that was the case. Moreover, I was certain that when he made up my grade he would take into consideration that I hadn’t been able to submit a final draft of my paper, since it was he who had failed to send me the comments on it, without which we had both agreed the exercise would be essentially useless.

When grades came out, I found a strange symbol where my tutorial grade should have appeared. “Grade not yet submitted,” according to the key. It was at this point that I started to get a little concerned. Weeks passed—no grade. I contacted my department, worried that not having the grade might affect my academic standing somehow. I was assured that it would not, which temporarily allayed my fears, if not my curiosity. As fall semester approached (and began) however, this curiosity took a turn towards skepticism. If my grade had already been determined, should it really take three months to submit the paperwork? And if it hadn’t, could it even be considered fair for a course that was now three months of summer activity away in memory? When my grade and the “comments” on my paper finally arrived, I was hardly surprised that neither was satisfactory. The comments were cursory at best, and the grade was vaguely insulting.

Faculty members, of course, may vary in their interest in teaching at least as much as students do in theirs of actual learning. Still, there is a crucial difference between the two: students, at the end of the term, are graded on their work. If they fail to meet certain minimum requirements they fail the class—and at Harvard they are even forced to take time off. In this case, the quality and timeliness of the feedback I received demonstrated my tutorial leader’s virtual indifference to the course. I wasn’t thrilled with the mark or satisfied with the feedback, but I was appalled at his behavior. I couldn’t imagine that such a cavalier attitude towards my education—especially in a one-on-one tutorial—would be considered acceptable by the University.

Over the course of a tedious year (distractions—classes, my thesis—kept popping up), I wrote up the situation and discussed it multiple times with my department chair. By the end of senior spring, I had also sought advice from my Senior Tutor, the Bureau of Study Counsel, a University Ombudsman, and a senior administrator in University Hall. Every one I talked to offered condolences—“Well, that’s really too bad,” or “I’m sorry that happened”—but no one suggested that there was anything to be done about it.

As I once again described the unfulfilled agreement that my tutorial leader and I had made about getting comments on my initial draft, the question I had been sadly too sure would at some point come finally arrived. It was with an almost wry smile that I replied when I was eventually asked, “Did you get it in writing?” That one telling question confirmed the unfortunate suspicion—later explicitly confirmed—that I had had throughout the latter part of the ordeal: namely, that I had neither rights nor recourse in the matter. When it comes to coursework faculty, apparently, cannot fail.

Though I find it somewhat lamentable that a sense of responsibility, or even duty, is not always sufficient to govern academic agreements, I find it virtually indefensible that the University offers no protection to students in the case of their breach.

Every first-year gets a scare session on the penalties of plagiarism and the importance of academic excellence. Why is it then that there are no clear rules or requirements for the amount of effort that faculty must contribute to the course environment? If passing requirements can be set for students across the board without threat to their academic freedom, then surely it is possible for faculty as well. Without them, students can hardly consider themselves equal citizens in an academic community; rather we realize that we are looked on, at best, as mere consumers of “education.”

While my experience was, of course, precipitated largely by the actions of a single faculty member, the circumstances that gave rise to it cannot be attributed only to that individual. Complicit in its development is the very culture of the University, which emphasizes faculty achievement outside of the classroom rather than within it. With a tenure system that consistently rewards external recognition rather than teaching excellence, the result is that student-dedicated faculty members are lost and students get shortchanged. The University must take a hard look at its hiring and tenure policies well beyond the limited scope of “pedagogy,” and commit to retaining quality educators. Otherwise, the prestige that Harvard gains in famous faculty members will only continue to be undermined by the declining undergraduate education, and eventually our degree will become little more than just another piece of paper that you pay for.

Susan E. McGregor ’05 is a freelance writer in New York. She is also a Crimson editor.