The Dean and his Program

Will the new General Education system be the Core 2.0 or a breath of fresh air? Will advising remain hit-or-miss? Will the instruction of writing at the college remain sub-par? Or will Harvard truly invest in the future of its undergraduates?

The answers to all of these questions lie in the hands of the next dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS). How he answers them will determine the hallmarks of a Harvard education for the next generation.

The most obvious issue pertaining to undergraduate education on the dean’s plate is the ongoing curricular review. On paper, the new system could either become a realigned Core or a completely different and innovative curriculum. Which path it takes lies in the finer details of its implementation, particularly finding and hiring personnel for the new system, all of which the new FAS dean will decide.

The General Education system can only be a drastic change if it includes a plethora of new classes and an emphasis on pedagogical innovation. For instance, Humanities 10, “An Introduction to Humanities Colloquium,” which brought together two of Harvard’s most renowned and brilliant scholars to create a new class focused on small discussions, is a prime example of what the new curriculum should strive for. Currently, however, the rewards for creating such a class are next to zero. The new dean is the only person who can allocate the funds needed to reward the development of new and exciting classes and pedagogical methods, and he or she must make doing so one of the top budgetary priorities.

Tenured professors, however, are often not the best people to teach broad introductory courses that require a lot of legwork to found and run. Beyond juggling teaching, research, and advising, most professors are specialists and want to teach a course focused on the particular area in which they are an expert, which explains why so many Core courses are narrow and specific. There is, however, a clear solution: The new dean should lift FAS’ illogical rule that sends away lecturers, top-notch teachers better suited to teaching broad subjects and developing new classes, after eight years of teaching. Instead, lecturers’ contracts should also be indefinitely renewable if their services are needed and they are willing to provide them.

The new system’s success also depends largely on the availability of a broad array of departmental alternatives to its foundational courses. Unless there is considerable latitude in selecting classes, the new system will be a straitjacket for students—just like the Core. Yet the current legislation implementing the proposal does not ensure such choice. It will be up to the new dean to lead the way in policing the system so that exemptions and departmental alternatives are the rule and not the exception.

Beyond the new general education system, we hope the new dean focuses his energies on undergraduate education on Harvard’s twin Achilles Heels: the advising system and the teaching of writing.

Advising at Harvard is wildly inconsistent. While some students are blessed with advisers sensitive to their needs and intimately knowledgeable of the College’s courses of study, others are saddled with professors—or worse yet graduate students—who know next to nothing. This problem is only compounded by the recent delay in concentration choice to the middle of sophomore year, which leaves first-semester sophomores largely in the abyss. We hope that the new dean will devote time, energy, and money towards shoring up this broken system across the College. That means not just freshman advising—which has been receiving the bulk of the attention of the new Associate Dean of Advising Programs Monique Rinere—but advising for sophomores and upperclassmen.

As for writing, a study commissioned by interim University President Derek C. Bok will provide the dean with a goldmine of data on where and why the current system is going wrong. We hope that information will provide the impetus for reforming the teaching of writing across the curriculum. Expository Writing needs additional funds so that it can hire top-notch writers rather than scrounging for the worn-out preceptors that now teach all freshman. And writing should not be forgotten after freshman year—if problems persist, so should teaching.

The new FAS dean needs to seriously address Harvard’s failing undergraduate education, before we begin to lag even further behind rival schools. Amid territorial faculty departments, a large FAS deficit and a mire of Harvard bureaucracy, it will be up to the dean to bring forth reforms that will ensure the quality and success of the Harvard education for years to come.