Accurate, Sophisticated, Helpful?

UPDATED: May 26, 2014, at 9:57 p.m.

In the third paragraph of an email devoted to Pre-Term Planning for Fall 2014, Dean Jay M. Harris informed rising sophomores, juniors, and seniors of a number of “refinements” to the Q guide. “These changes reflect the decisions of the Faculty Council that were intended to make the Q a more accurate, sophisticated, and helpful mechanism for learning about and choosing courses,” he writes.

After a few sentences discussing more innocuous changes to the Q guide, he explains: “The Q form will still ask you to rate the difficulty of the course (and this rating will still be communicated to the course head and instructional support staff), but the “difficulty” score will no longer be publicly displayed.”

A more “accurate, sophisticated, and helpful mechanism,” indeed.

The removal of difficulty ratings from the Q guide is troubling. The way this decision was made—eight months before it was announced, and ostensibly with no input from undergraduates—indicates a serious lack of concern for student opinion. The timidity with which the change was communicated to undergraduates, after the vast majority of those affected by it had left campus, buried near the end of an email on a related but far less controversial topic, suggests a lack of confidence in its legitimacy even among the administration that enacted it. In the wake of the cheating and email search scandals, we find this evidence of continued distrust between students and administrators especially upsetting, albeit unsurprising.

Harvard is attempting to remedy a much more complex issue by attacking a mere symptom of the problem. Harvard’s culture of grade inflation and A-seeking naturally makes grades important; as such, it is unsurprising that students sometimes employ difficulty data in their search for “easy” courses, especially Gen Ed courses that are not especially fulfilling in their own right.

But there are also far less pernicious reasons one might take difficulty ratings into account, for instance, when trying to design a balanced schedule, one that is both challenging and manageable. We find this to be an especially compelling reason on Harvard’s campus, where issues of mental health, stress, and sleep deprivation are particularly pressing.

It seems the University is trying to shift blame for the recent grade inflation debacle onto its students. It must be their fault for enrolling in easy classes and refusing to challenge themselves. But it is the University that must undertake a more serious self-examination if it is to accurately cure what ails it. Denying students valuable information is not the solution.