Here was my experience: my sophomore year our sophomore department seminar had 10 students and two faculty. My junior year my seminar had two students and a truly gifted doctoral student, because he was the one in the department that knew the most about medieval Christianity. My senior year it was just me and a history professor.
Lessons learned: avoid Econ.
Other lesson learned: scrupulously avoid what people have “heard” about the place.
Third lesson learned: Don’t fuss over the quality of the grad students. They are the best grad students on the planet, and next year when they finish their dissertations they will be teaching at that liberal arts school we dream of for our kids. Especially don’t complain about their accents I have a word for that kind of nonsense but I won’t use it here.
No; it is a cautionary tale about drawing an unsupported attribution from inadequate data. Econ, especially intro Econ, everywhere is huge and likely not representative of a school in general. OP confounds the pains of an Econ major with the pains of Harvard as an undergraduate institution. There is at least as much difference in instruction between and Econ major and, say, a religion major - at almost any school - as there is between any two top university-sized institutions.
If you go to a sizable university and require an Econ major, be prepared to face a lot of grad students. Believe it or not if you didn’t the tuition bill would be a lot (!) higher. Or, major in something else.
If you require Econ AND a discussion-centered curriculum taught by tenured folks, go small.
There are few options in life without such a tradeoff.
Wow, how kind! That’s extremely nice of you to say. Thank you.
I will say that the fellow students I’ve met at Harvard are perhaps more valuable than the instruction itself. Which is saying quite a lot, since (as I described) I’ve found the teaching to be pretty extraordinary.
I read the OP and chuckled – I could have written this myself 30 years ago about that “other” institution down the road in New Haven. I too was an Econ major in those days and, though quite interested in the subject matter, recall spending endless hours writhing through the tedious, disorganized and highly confusing lectures delivered by Yale’s Economics faculty – and some of these profs were “giants” in their field. Many of the profs did little to disguise their own boredom with the proposition of teaching lower level courses to undergrads and most of the TAs who led the anodyne discussion sections were too deep in their own struggles with the English language to be of much use. (Occasionally they brought snacks, though!). We mostly taught ourselves the material out of the textbooks by doing the problem sets, but still went to class out of some guilty diligence ethic that still lingered in us from high school. Out of the 12 courses I took in my Econ major, I would say that only 2 were really well taught – one by a visiting professor from Williams College and another by a visiting professor from Trinity (Hartford). My high school girlfriend, who went to Dartmouth and also ended up majoring in Economics, had a very different experience: engaging classes with experienced professors who formed friendly relationships with their students. I graduated with “distinction” in my major, but never once formed a relationship with one of my econ professors – I don’t think I ever had lunch with one. Most of my classes were lectures where I didn’t have to speak.
Now, do I regret my decision to attend Yale as a result? Not at all. I loved my four years there and still get goosebumps when I do an occasional visit to campus. I think the problem is Economics – the kinds of people it attracts as a professional academic discipline tend to be – well, let’s just say “not people persons.” Maybe dry and nerdy, especially at major research universities. Classes are large. Similar problems may be found in other mathematically oriented disciplines, I believe. In other fields, I found Yale – and I am sure this is true of Harvard today as well – a “Garden of Academic Delights.” I took amazingly interesting and fun courses in English, History, Philosophy, Psychology and some science departments. I did an “unofficial” minor in Slavic Languages and Literatures and my profs there were incredibly dedicated and competent – I learned so much from them and had a blast doing it. The non-academic stuff at these big ivies is great – I did all sorts of extra-curricular stuff in music and the arts that I consider highlights of my life. In other words, don’t let the shortcomings of the big research oriented Econ departments scare you away from an otherwise outstanding and privileged opportunity!
As an appendix to this post, I will relate two personal academic anecdotes that might shock folks who assume that places like Harvard and Yale are places where excellence is demanded of everyone at all times:
Yale required majors to take an econometrics course. For scheduling reasons, I waited till senior year to take it and found that the normal undergraduate course was not being offered that semester. So the department put me in a graduate seminar on econometrics – it had about 6 grad students and 6 undergrads (all in the same boat as me) in it and had a very famous visiting professor from Oxford teaching it. I had expected a very practically oriented course with lots of case studies and computer modelling – but this prof taught the course completely symbolically. Just Greek letters with lots of proofs and no actual numbers. Lots of highfalutin’ Math lemmas, etc. Though a couple of the grad students seemed to follow what was going on, we undergrads with limited math training just looked at each other in complete befuddlement. When it came to the midterm I got 17 points out of 100 and most of the other undergrads were within a few points above or below me. I suddenly realized I was about to fail my first course at Yale – and in my major and my senior year! I might not graduate on time.
Anyhow, the prof was a nice chap and took pity on us and blamed the results on his teaching. A couple of the grad students had scored in the 50s or 60s so he made 50 and over an “A” and 0-49 an “A-“. He then cancelled the final since he “didn’t want to put us through that again.” Since Yale at that time (unbeknownst to the professor) did not give + or – grades, to my complete amazement I ended up with an A in a graduate seminar in econometrics with one of the world’s great econometricians having only scored 17 points and not knowing one damn thing about the field and never having done even the most simple regression analysis.
I asked a very highly regarded Economics professor nearing retirement to be my advisor on my senior essay. (If you study statistics, he actually has a statistic named after him). I had had this guy for a course my junior year – and though very boring I thought his interests were fairly relevant to my topic. He was nice enough and agreed to advise me – but it proved impossible to meet with him throughout the year. He missed advisory meetings and didn’t recognize me when I bumped into him on campus. Essentially, he was a phantom on this project. Discouraged, I sort of blew off my essay till spring break - two weeks before it was due. Over those two break weeks I churned out 70 pages of crapola (on a Selectric, no word processors then!!!) and deposited it in his box reasoning that despite that fact that it was junk it did have a few pretty diagrams and a graph or two. When I got it back two weeks later, to my astonishment it had an “A” on it and nothing else – no comments, no red marks, no question marks, just an “A”. No way was it an “A” piece of work, but who was I to argue? I took the A, got honors in my major, and never saw the man again. To this day, I don’t believe he read a word of that essay. Saw the essay in his mailbox, wondered what it was, just put an “A” on it for convenience, and got on with his day. Such is life in America’s educational Valhalla.
Just as I asserted that the kind of experience I had at Yale was available at Harvard, @boyle16 has amply shown that the kind of experience the OP has at Harvard was available at Yale. That’s higher education: it’s not a standard product.
I may also have learned that Economics students and faculty deserve one another.
OP’s experience is similar to many undergrads at Harvard. Harvard is notorious for TFs teaching many classes. Probably similar to undergrads in a lot of top research universities. However, it depends on your concentration/ department. Econ is huge. I didn’t like Ec10, although we had Marty Feldstein who was a decent lecturer. Maybe it was the fact that there were sooo many students packing Sanders Theatre. Also, it does get better as you move up to the more advanced courses, and they have the small professor-led seminars also, even in popular concentrations like Government. Biology did something interesting: they broke up the department into multiple, smaller concentrations. Not sure if it helped.
There are plenty of professors out there who DO care about teaching undergrads. You have to seek them out. In general, surveys have shown that the smaller concentrations/ departments have the highest student satisfaction ratings at Harvard (surprise). Someone mentioned Comparative Religion. They have professors like Diana Eck who are wonderful and caring.
But unfortunately, for core/mandatory/intro classes, you don’t have a choice.That’s why many students choose to go to top LACs instead of Ivy League schools: exclusive focus on undergraduate teaching, smaller class sizes, and increased accessibility to professors. In short, if you are in the right concentration, Harvard can be the best learning experience of your life. If not, it can make you question why your parents spent so much money on your college education.
For many, but not all, intro classes is this true. Part of it depends on your concentration. Part of it depends upon your AP performance. If you get 5’s on micro/macro, the large size of Ec10 is a non-issue; you just skip the course.
For me, I’ve had one class that was 75 students. It was a gen ed class that I chose for the material/instructor, but I could have taken another course with fewer students to fulfill the gen ed requirements. Even for the intro courses in my concentration, the class size was not > 30. However, as someone who is not an econ concentrator, even I knew before applying that Ec10 was a huge course, so this really should be a surprise to nobody.
@skieurope : Yes, that too is true. Also, there are multiple tracks for some intro-level classes. For example, in my time, there were three physics intro classes. They were recommended for different categories of students: track 1 was for people who were interested but not serious; track 2 was primarily for the pre-meds and non-physics science majors; and track 3 was designed for Physics majors. Similarly, organic chemistry had two levels for the intro class. Pre-meds in the know would often take the more challenging track because it was taught by the better teacher. They learned the subject better than the ones who took the middle track and were taught by lame professors. The extra effort paid off in the end.
Would you recommend skipping it if you think you may continue on in Econ courses beyond EC10? Or should those students (whether they choose to concentrate in Econ or just take further Econ classes) go ahead and take EC10 freshman year since it is a prerequisite to other classes and likely more comprehensive than any AP class would’ve been in high school. (We hear the same about math classes – just retake the lower level even if you place higher. Curious whether you’d suggest same re Econ given the class size issue.) Thanks.
I don’t have any advice on whether it is useful to retake econ if you are planning on more econ classes, but part of the reason Ec10 is renowned is due to the caliber of the prof (who admittedly is more like a master of ceremonies/prof and the guest speakers. Students who are economist-groupies might enjoy the class.
I am part of the group that thinks that retaking a class is a waste of time. Also a lot of kids at Harvard do not think very highly of Mankiw and his bias.
I am part of the same group that thinks it’s a waste of time. Now there are some departments where not retaking is not an option (e.g. physics).
Part of the beauty of Harvard, and probably many other schools, is that they offer thousands of classes each semester. One of the biggest challenges is getting it down to 4. So anytime one can get out of a class, I say go for it.
Again, I have no horse in this game, since I did not take a class with Mankiw, but he does seem to have those who love him or not. But there are some professors who are absolutely engaging in the classroom, but that does not mean one needs to take the class. Just ask the prof if you can audit it. Certainly any class in an auditorium, nobody will care.
