Delaying Indecision

The incoming freshmen who flooded the campus this past weekend will face a markedly new concentration structure, as theirs will be the first class to declare a concentration in the middle of their sophomore year. While we endorse many of the reforms suggested by the Harvard College Curricular Review (HCCR), this is not one of them.

Advocates of the delay argue that it will give students more time to explore their options before committing to a concentration. But the advantage of taking four extra courses seems dubious. Rather then encourage students to invest more time or thought into their decision, the delayed choice deadline will likely only delay the time when serious contemplation occurs. Harvard students often do not get serious about decisions until deadlines near—they crack their books open a day or two before their finals, and meet Monday night deadlines at 11:59 p.m., if that. Sometimes serious thought about concentration choice does not even occur until after students have put their name to a choice. A wholly inadequate system of non-concentration advising only makes it more likely that students’ time before declaring will not be well spent.

But the true letdown about delayed concentration choice is not the likelihood that it will fail to result in more informed choices by students—it is the doors that the later choice closes. In an effort to be more like other schools, Harvard is forgetting to be itself. Harvard has a culture that fosters advanced academic work. By reducing the amount of time that students spend in concentrations—and jeopardizing Harvard’s tutorial system in the process—the delayed decision deadline will reduce the standard by which Harvard has traditionally measured mastery of a subject.

Moreover, all of proposed solutions to salvage tutorials—shortening the tutorial, pushing the tutorial into junior year, or opening up the fall tutorial to non-concentrators—all compromise depth of exploration. Shortening of the tutorials forces departments to unnaturally condense an already rigorous curriculum. Bleeding over into junior year impacts other valuable programs such as study abroad and senior thesis tutorials. And open admission to these tutorials will cause class sizes to bloat, destroying the intimacy and attention that tutorials are meant to provide. None of these are tradeoffs warranted by saddling students with an extra semester to flit about, lost in an unstructured, pre-concentration Harvard curriculum.

In the spirit of combating some of these problems, the Faculty also passed a provision requiring first semester sophomores to meet with departmental advisors. We hope the Faculty takes an extra step in this direction and require freshmen to declare a few prospective concentrations at the end of their freshmen year.

Finally, the measure to delay concentration choice passed in a sparsely attended Faculty meeting last week. It is unfortunate that the very same Faculty who attended meetings in droves to condemn University President Lawrence H. Summers now barely makes quorum to pass profoundly important educational reforms. We have called on the Faculty repeatedly to take a more active interest in the HCCR, and continue to be underwhelmed by their efforts.