Shopping for Teachers

If the first step to overcoming a problem is admitting that you have one, then Harvard is on the right track with the creation of the Task Force on Teaching and Career Development. In an initiative independent of the Harvard College Curricular Review, the faculty on the task will submit recommendations to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) this spring on improving pedagogy within FAS.

The curricular review’s January report on pedagogy gives us some inspiration about where this task force might focus its efforts. That report identifies key areas for improvement, such as the gathering and interpretation of course review data, the restrictive nature of the standard Harvard schedule and course model, and the tendency of faculty to let research distract them from teaching. The bulk of the committee’s recommendations focused on improving the resources available to faculty to improve their classroom instruction.

This is all a fair start. A sustained effort to improve the pedagogical resources available to Harvard’s instructors will do no harm. But the curricular review continues to ignore the most fundamental reason why teaching at Harvard falls short: the University does not do enough to hire and retain good teachers. Year in, year out, Harvard puts poor instructors at the helm of some of the College’s most important foundational courses, while letting some of its best instructors slip away.

Take Economics 1010b, the intermediate macroeconomic theory course required of all economics concentrators who lack a background in multivariable calculus. Four years ago, the course registered a mediocre 3.2 out of five in the CUE guide, and three years ago it notched a 3.3. While not terrible, these ratings should have signaled a pressing need for change. Indeed it did—Harvard assigned a different professor to the job, resulting in an even less impressive 2.7 for the course. Now, after three years in a row of substandard ratings, one would think that special attention might be paid to the the next 1010b instructor. But instead, last year’s course (with yet another new professor) managed an unthinkably abysmal 2.1 on the CUE guide, with lecture attendance, based on our estimations from students enrolled in the course, below 25 percent for much of the year. And while student ratings should not be the ultimate barometer of pedagogical efficacy, they are at least indicative of the profound impact those dedicated primarily to their teaching can have on undergraduates’ educational experience.

And while some introductory courses continue to languish under tenured professors, some courses thrive under the instruction of untenured lecturers, if they stick around. The Chinese program’s first-year preceptor Min Chen garnered CUE ratings of 4.7 and 4.8, but she will be plying her craft at Yale this year. And longtime economics teaching fellow Bruce Watson, who pinch-hit in 2002 for a seriously underprepared lecturer, continues to teach introductory economics at the Extension School, but not the College. One hears countless tales of the best mathematics, foreign language, and expository writing preceptors leaving Harvard for lack of job security or benefits, and countless more tales of new, inexperienced, and generally lackluster preceptors taking their place.

Why does this happen? Professional instructors such as preceptors are limited to eight years at Harvard before they are forced out. (In most cases, lecturers are limited to three.) Some exceptions exist for senior lecturers who hold concurrent administrative positions. The answer to Harvard’s pedagogical woes is not to force the world’s best researchers to teach courses they have no interest in teaching. Harvard should do away with the three-year and eight-year rules to allow the best lecturers to continue to teach on a contract basis.

Proponents of the current system offer two main arguments. First, they hope that Ph.D. candidates and preceptors will go on to bigger and better things, and wish not to promote full-time instruction as a viable career choice. This strain of opposition is not only misguided—Harvard instructors are capable of making their own career choices—but it necessarily compromises Harvard’s ostensible commitment to teaching by suggesting that college instruction alone is not a worthy career.

Second, administrators insist, control of the curriculum should rest only with tenured professors, the most accomplished scholars in a given field. This should largely continue to be the case. But in many fields, lecturers teach longstanding curricula—such as in introductory mathematics—or deftly tweak them to fit their own needs—such as in expository writing. After all, Harvard already allows preceptors to serve as primary instructors in the foreign languages, mathematics, and expository writing. There exists no plausible defense for not keeping the best ones around for as long as possible.

A college is more than just its scholars. In our plentiful supply of outstanding preceptors, lecturers, and professors, we have the building blocks of what could significantly augment our undergraduate education. What it will take to make that change is something Harvard must learn to do better: overcome institutional inertia in the pursuit of excellence.