NYTimes: You Don't Go to Harvard For The Teaching

Colleges and Universities A-Z Harvard University
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<p>Yep, people from rival schools and other Harvard-haters have been saying that for over 300 years now. It's perpetually "declining" but it never declines. It's the flip side of those 3rd and 4th-tier schools that are on the make -- they are perpetually "improving" but they never improve.</p>

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debate addict -- I'm curious why you seem more inclined to accept the opinions of posters with no ties to Harvard who cite "winkopedia" and unattributed hearsay over the opinions of parents of current Harvard students and current and former Harvard students themselves.

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I just wanted to know more about it. I am not supporting that opinion in any case. I posed a question that has been fully replied, and I have a more lucid perspective now. I did not accede to what Poster X said, I just posed a question predicated on what he said before....</p>

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Sorry, I guess I misinterpreted your statement.</p>

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<p>nceph</p>

<p>I cited Winkopedia because it was simple - did I really need a bibliography?</p>

<p>The article linked to in the original post seemed ironic to me in its trumpeting of Bok and Faust's supposed initiative to get the professors to teach more...BECAUSE of the play at the time given to the story that those same efforts by Summers were what really cost him his job.</p>

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<p>Yes, there is a big difference between a student who looks for an environment in which to be taught, and a student who looks for an environment in which to learn. I am well satisfied, having traveled to Harvard and to many other colleges on business trips, and knowing a variety of graduates of a variety of colleges, that Harvard offers wonderful opportunities for a self-motivated learner.</p>

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<p>It seems to me like all of the things that make Harvard "superior" are related to the grad school. Harvard has, almost undisputably, the best overall graduate school. The awards and honors are going mostly to the professors that either simply do research at Harvard, or the teachers that do mostly research and very little teaching. Having top notch professors who do the best research in the country is great, but they're not going to teach you in your classes, or if they do, they'll be teaching once or twice in a massive class, or they'll MAYBE teach a single class. You can only learn so much from research if you haven't adequetly learned the concepts.</p>

<p>"Yep, people from rival schools and other Harvard-haters have been saying that for over 300 years now. It's perpetually "declining" but it never declines."</p>

<p>Both of my parents teach at Harvard Medical school and both went to Harvard for college and graduate school, and one of my mom's friends is tutor at Harvard and closely interacts with many students at Harvard. This person said "Now is not a good time to be an undergraduate at Harvard."</p>

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<p>^I always thought that but so many Harvard people tell me, quite persuasively, that that's a myth perpetuated by other schools/people.</p>

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<p>Well, my daughter and her roommates have nothing to do with the medical school - which is in another part of town, but they are all Harvard undergraduates right now. And they love it. They are getting a great education, and they love the school. In fact my daughter gets depressed over the fact that she has only more year until graduation and will then be forced to leave the place.</p>

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<p>I presume the parents' undergraduate careers are at least ten years old? If so, they are not very relevant to the discussion of current teaching.</p>

<p>As for the tutor, I don't know what s/he means unless it is that this tutor is not doing a good job. There's certainly a lot of discussion going on about the curricular review, the new dean of FAS, how to improve teaching (how can such a discussion be a bad thing?), etc... But I fail to see how any of this affects students' classroom experience.</p>

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<p>"Both of my parents teach at Harvard Medical school and both went to Harvard for college and graduate school, and one of my mom's friends is tutor at Harvard and closely interacts with many students at Harvard. This person said "Now is not a good time to be an undergraduate at Harvard."</p>

<p>The concept of teaching at Harvard Medical School is very different from teaching at Harvard College. For a given course, the lecture is given by a different person every day ("expert" on that specific topic of the day). The director of the course simply arranges for the speakers and grades the exams. Professors who mainly do research fulfill their requirement by giving 2-3 lectures a year. Professors who mainly see patients fulfill their requirement by serving for a month as an inpatient attending physician taking care of hospitalized patients, and maybe spend a few hours that month with the medical students rotating through that service. I'm not sure if your parents would be in a position to assess the quality of teaching at Harvard College. </p>

<p>The title of a "tutor" is given to graduate students who live in undergrad dorms and serve as advisors, or faculty members who are invited to dinners with students every once in a while ("Senior Common Room"), or who write draft recommendation letters for students applying to law, medical, or business schools so that they can be read by the pre-law, pre-medical, pre-business committee chair at that particular undergraduate dorm ("House") -- since there are just too many letters to be written by a single person. This could be a full-time clinician at a Harvard teaching hospital who meets with a premed student just once before they start applying ... and that's pretty much it. "Tutors" don't teach or tutor anything. So a tutor might have seen a premed student stressed out about his applications but I doubt that he would necessarily have any insights into the quality of teaching at Harvard College.</p>

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<p>"The awards and honors are going mostly to the professors that either simply do research at Harvard, or the teachers that do mostly research and very little teaching. Having top notch professors who do the best research in the country is great, but they're not going to teach you in your classes, or if they do, they'll be teaching once or twice in a massive class, or they'll MAYBE teach a single class. You can only learn so much from research if you haven't adequetly learned the concepts."</p>

<p>I've had my introductory science classes taught by Nobel Prize winners as well as some of my upper level classes. Some were good, some were bad, and some were unbearably arrogant, but I got to see how Nobel Prize winning scientists think and talk about science. Sometimes it was reassuring to see that they also made mistakes just like everybody else. I've had freshman seminars taught by very big name professors. Currently about half of freshman seminars are taught in a small group setting (less than 10 people) by tenured professors, not instructors or part-time faculty. I have kept a paper with handwritten comments by a very famous scholar, with a grade "A" in the margin, that I plan to impress my children with someday in the future. In my junior and senior years, I worked in the lab of a very senior scientist (although admittedly I interacted mostly with a postdoctoral fellow) and my friend worked in the lab of a Nobel Prize winning organic chemist; his senior honors thesis was based on that research. I don't think you get to do that at a small liberal arts college.</p>

<p>Harvard is very good at letting you know if you are not really good at something. If you are afraid of finding out, then a more nurturing and forgiving environment could be a better option. But I think the vast majority of the people are very happy with the challenges and opportunities they have encountered at Harvard College and have no second thoughts about their choice.</p>

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<p>I said nothing about my parents' opinions on Harvard, and I agree that their opinions on Harvard and Harvard Medical School have little bearing on the quality of undergraduate education at Harvard.</p>

<p>Obviously the tutor is going to be meeting with people who are more stressed out than the average Harvard student, but to say that a tutor (who is living in an undergraduate dorm and regularly interacting with many types of students) has little insight into the quality of teaching at Harvard seems a bit ridiculous.</p>

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<p>As I said, there are many types of tutors. Resident versus. non-resident (who do not actually live in dorms with students). Graduate student tutor vs. faculty tutor. Faculty tutors (assistant professor or above) typically do not live in the dorms, except for the House Masters. Graduate student tutors can be resident or non-resident. Most pre-med tutors are either medical students or residents who live near the medical school/hospitals and help out once a year with the letter-writing. It works out pretty well because the letter writers are insiders at Harvard Medical School, have often served on admissions committees at Harvard Medical School, and are thus able to advocate effectively on behalf of their students (which is one reason why Harvard College does so well in sending students to Harvard Medical School). But they probably haven't attended a course at Harvard College and wouldn't know about the quality of teaching, unless they went to Harvard College themselves. And if you were a premed meeting with a tutor who will write the recommendation letter, would you go on at length about how bad the teaching was and that's why you didn't feel like studying? Or would you try to say something positive about yourself?</p>

<p>Everyone's entitled to his or her opinion but a single tutor's opinion should be taken with a big grain of salt.</p>

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<p>You could avoid this whole mess and just go to YALE!!!</p>

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<p>No, but you were clearly using their status as part of the reason why you consider yourself to be "in the know" about Harvard undergraduate life, otherwise you just would have quoted the tutor and not mentioned your parents at all.</p>

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<p>The sense I get about Harvard from my daughter is that if you're a freshman and have been accustomed to needing motivation from your parents or some other external source, you aren't going to be productive there. However if you're self - motivated, Harvard is paradise, with so many opportunities, it becomes difficult to choose between them.</p>

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<p>DocT is right on the money. Indeed, most people here love doing something, and they do it with a passion, mostly due to self-motivation. I know some people who are absolutely miserable here: they don't quite know what they want to do if life. </p>

<p>It's often said that college is a time for exploration; Harvard's not the MOST ideal place for that...but, if you know what you want to do, there probably aren't many other places that are better.</p>

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<p>"the professors that either simply do research at Harvard, or the teachers that do mostly research and very little teaching."</p>

<p>Every full time member of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences must teach undergraduates every year. So unless they're on sabbatical, they'll be teaching undergrads.</p>

<p>At any rate, check out the Harvard catalog at <a href="http://www.registrar.fas.harvard.edu/fasro/courses/index.jsp?cat=ugrad&subcat=courses%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.registrar.fas.harvard.edu/fasro/courses/index.jsp?cat=ugrad&subcat=courses&lt;/a>. Other than tutorials (which are required in each major), the vast majority of classes in all fields are listed as "for undergraduates and graduates." Most of the "primarily for graduates" courses are open to qualified undergrads, who regularly take them. In other words, with the exception of tutorials, there isn't a bright line between grad and undergrad work in FAS. You do as much as you are ready for. You don't have to be a senior in the field to qualify for those courses, either; I took one graduate course that wasn't even in my major.</p>

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Every full time member of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences must teach undergraduates every year.

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<p>I have no reason to disbelieve that, but I wasn't aware that the requirement is that specific. Certainly some professors go for a year or more teaching only grad students, but this may be due to the accounting of undergrad teaching credits (some assignments counted as more than one class, or credit rolling over from year to year), or taking money from grant rather than salary in some years without formally being on sabbatical. </p>

<p>Is the teaching requirement outlined in the FAS handbook or other online source?</p>

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<p>I think at least a third of the courses I took at Harvard I took with grad students. (All of architectural history ones and a seminar in the art history department.) There may have been others as well.</p>