<p>
</p>
<p>Uh, then you’re completely wrong. Assistant professor jobs at Harvard are tenure-track jobs. After all, what does it mean to be an assistant professor if you’re not on the tenure track. </p>
<p>To give you one just example, consider the CV of Greg Mankiw, former head of the CEA. He’s obviously tenured now as a full professor, and has been since 1987. But from 1985-1987 he was an Assistant Professor of Economics. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/mankiw/cv/CV_shortversion_Nov2007.pdf[/url]”>http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/mankiw/cv/CV_shortversion_Nov2007.pdf</a></p>
<p>So how exactly did Mankiw get tenure if his Assistant Professorship was not on the tenure track? Perhaps YOU ought to look up your facts.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Perhaps so, but Harvard apparently has quite a few adjuncts and lecturers on the faculty. Why those people took those positions, I don’t know. But it evidently happens. </p>
<p>Hence, if Harvard can already hire some people for adjunct/lecturer positions, why is it such an outrageous notion to hire more? </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>But, again, that happens now anyway. Who teaches the gateway intro computer science course CS 50? David Malan. Yep, the lecturer David Malan. Every Harvard student who is considering concentrating in CS has to take CS 50. Hence, they are all forced to take a class under a “lowly” lecturer as opposed to an eminent professor. </p>
<p>[Harvard</a> College’s Computer Science 50: Introduction to Computer Science I](<a href=“http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~cs50/]Harvard”>http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~cs50/)</p>
<p>Yet you don’t hear any rioting in Maxwell Dworkin from the Harvard CS students demanding that CS 50 be taught by an actual professor (or, if there is such rioting, it clearly isn’t doing much good). </p>
<p>Or consider just how many of the undergrad courses are taught by (as yet) relatively obscure Assistant Profs. For example, the next CS intro course in the sequence, CS 51, is taught by Assistant Professor Radhika Nagpal. She might be eventually promoted to tenure. Then again, she might not. The fact is, many (probably most) Harvard assistant professors will not be promoted to tenure. Hence, you may end up taking CS 51 under a professor who is later found to not be worthy of tenure.</p>
<p>The upshot is that plenty of Harvard classes are currently taught by relatively unprominent faculty members. So I hardly see how the proposal to bring in lecturers makes things any worse. Again, CS 50 is already taught be a lecturer. So does it really make any difference if you broke up CS 50 into several different sections, each taught by a lecturer? Either way, you’re going to end up being taught by a lecturer.</p>
<p>And besides, I think we vastly vastly overestimate the desire of students to be taught by a famous professor. I don’t think they really do. What they really want is to be taught by a good teacher, which does not necessarily mean being taught by a famous professor. Let’s face it. Many of the famous profs at any school: Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Yale, Caltech etc. are just not very good teachers, especially of undergrads. Just because you know how to do great research doesn’t mean that you know how to teach to undergrads. </p>
<p>I remember back when I was taking college math courses by famous profs who were terrible teachers and wishing that the classes were instead being taught by my old high school math teacher. Sure, he wasn’t a famous researcher by any means. But at least he knew how to convey mathematics in a way that was not only clear, but also fun and interesting, something that these famous profs clearly did not know how to do. </p>
<p>Nor am I the only one saying so. Ben Golub and my brother, both Caltech grads, freely admit that some of the famous profs there are bad teachers One can also simply browse websites like ratemyprofessors.com and note that many famous profs at any school have mediocre teaching ratings.</p>