Failure to Launch

The committees of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) march to the beat of a very, very slow drummer. As shopping period races by, the Core Standing Committee and the Educational Policy Committee (EPC) have failed to keep pace, leaving students to suffer in the confusion of mixed tempos. Despite the promise that accompanied announcements of a secondary fields program and Humanities General Education courses, the disorganized implementation of curricular reform has made this shopping period a particularly chaotic one.

The administration first erred in its half-baked implementation of secondary fields. After announcing the initiative to much fanfare, the EPC has neglected to operate with any consideration of Harvard’s academic calendar. Rather than attempting to solicit and publicize departmental requirements for secondary fields to guide students’ course selections, the EPC has created curiously late deadlines for consideration of secondary fields The mid-October and mid-February dates inexplicably fall just beyond the reach of shopping period in either semester, meaning students are unable to choose classes with the necessary information. Setting earlier deadlines would have compelled departments to make these relatively simple decisions—choosing four to six courses is hardly monumental—on a student-friendly timetable. Instead, the EPC met for the first time this past Tuesday, when it was not ready to finalize any proposals submitted by departments.

The EPC has left students in the dark about what courses to shop, what seminars to apply for, and how generally to structure their academic futures. Many students have scrambled to individual departments to investigate what requirements may potentially be put in place. But the EPC’s vague guidance as to what might constitute an approvable secondary field has made it tough for departments to publicize their intended requirements with confidence. Unable to post anything on their websites, departments are left to field phone calls from students who can only receive vague and provisional advice. We hope the EPC will consider changing its spring deadline to one that coincides with students’ interests and allows students to make informed decisions.

The EPC, to be sure, is not alone in its plodding ways. The Core Standing Committee evidently missed their cue to act on last spring’s announcement of new Humanities divisional courses. As students thumbed through the nearly thousand-page Courses of Instruction, many were delighted to find classes such as Humanities 10, “An Introductory Humanities Colloquium,” and Humanities 14, “Existentialism in Literature and Film,” but they were left without guidance as to what general education requirement these general education courses would fulfill. The Core Committee’s failure to explicitly outline their role left Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 and interim Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles to declare by fiat that three of the Humanities courses will count as Literature and Arts-A Core courses.

Harvard has failed to accompany its announcements of new initiatives with concrete information about the ways in which those initiatives will effect students; instead, students have been left sorting through empty promises of curricular renewal. The Curricular Review is motivated by a desire to improve undergraduate education; to be successful, the implementation of reforms must do more than confound our shopping period woes.