<p>I don't know if anyone posted this when it was first published, but I thought it was interesting if somewhat depressing: Why</a> Harvard Needs to Get Harder | Harvard Magazine Sep-Oct 2009</p>
<p>interesting… i have to admit, this article surprised me- from what I’d heard, Harvard was pretty notorious for not paying as much attention to its undergraduate students as to its graduate students, which was why this particular case of professor-yelling-at-student for not doing work seemed unusual. thanks for sharing the link, anyways :)</p>
<p>I did not read this article when it appeared, though we get 3 copies of the Magazine! Thanks for posting it.
The author conflates two issues: requirements that students submit their work on time and requirements for graduation. They are separate.
Penalizing students for not submitting work on time is at the discretion of individual profs, and their standards vary enormously. I once knew a prof who docked a whole letter from the grade for each day a term paper was late. Others were lenient, considering that the aim of the course was not to assign grades but to help students learn the materials. If they did so a bit later than expected, so be it. Between the two, there can be quite a variety of measures and expectations.
As for concentration requirements, a lot of profs have been asking themselves what their mission is. Is it to train students for grad school? Very likely, classics majors will not go on to grad school (neither will English, history, economics, government… majors). So having a set of requirements that works very well for prospective grads may not serve the interests of others quite so well. Meanwhile, departments such as Classics probably are struggling to attract more students to their courses, and if possible, into their concentrations; and preparing them for a variety of career paths.
I don’t know what the answer to this issue is, but it has nothing to do with holding students to deadlines or giving them a dressing down.</p>
<p>Someone did post this before, because I know I read it several months ago, and we don’t get ANY Harvard alumni publications. (The Kennedy School, however, has never stopped soliciting contributions from my wife, who was accepted there in 1980, deferred for a year, and then changed directions and went to law school instead.)</p>
<p>This falls into a familiar but curious genre of undergraduates complaining that their institutions were not demanding enough. Pardon me, but I am not much interested in hearing that from Harvard students. I don’t see it as a horrible flaw that Harvard treats its glittery undergraduates as if they were something like intelligent, responsible adults, capable of setting and accomplishing their own goals. If a Harvard student wants academic rigor and breadth of study, by golly there’s no better place on the planet to get those things. If a Harvard student wants to slip by in his classes to work on the Crimson, I think that’s a little misguided, but the Crimson is a damn fine college newspaper and a proven career-builder, so it’s not exactly the same thing as getting wasted every day or playing World of Warcraft 24-7.</p>
<p>It is a somewhat interesting, but ultimately banal, element of adolescent psychology that even the most hardworking, intelligent, self-starting individuals have a residual desire to have an institutional Mommy and Daddy impose requirements on them and threaten strict punishment if they fall short. OK, I’m not shocked, but grow up already. You are responsible for your own education.</p>
<p>Actually, there’s a way of reading that article:" Look at me! I spent most of my time on the Crimson and managed to pull in a well-researched article in only two days! Easy as pie!"</p>
<p>Lol i know the person who wrote that. Omg.</p>
<p>Harvard gives its students more freedom than most schools. If the author did not reach their full potential academically, then that is their choice. Not Harvard’s fault. As an earlier poster said, Harvard does not hold anyone’s hand. It isn’t a liberal arts college and never purported to be.</p>
<p>“Harvard would be doing its students a favor by holding them more accountable academically”</p>
<p>I differ with the author. Holding the students accountable does NOT mean pestering them before the deadline about turning in the paper on time. Holding them accountable means flunking them if they don’t.</p>
<p>It’s been popular BS since the dawn of time that grad students get more attention than undergrads at Harvard. The reverse is true, according to pretty much all of us who got a second degree at Harvard.</p>
<p>^My advisor and I were separated by the Atlantic and the whole breadth of the North American continent. I got practically no feedback on my dissertation, and certainly no “talking to.”</p>
<p>Harvard has been focusing on improving the undergraduate experience for some years now. So that info on focus on grads is quite dated. We think the results have been good, based on our child’s experience.</p>
<p>I think that the campus has so many different types of kids, that generalizing from this one student’s experience is not useful. I am surprised that he thinks his experience is typical. What exactly is “typical” in a rich and diverse environment like Harvard. Some kdis are focused on EC’s, some on studies; some are focused on future careers, others are smelling the (intellectual) roses.</p>
<p>Working on the Crimson or in a theater production or on a sports team certainly takes up a lot of time, energy and passion.</p>
<p>Our daughter held off on EC’s first year and has one small one now. Many students volunteer a few hours/week, or sing in a chorus, or do other things that supplement academics but do not supplant them.</p>
<p>All I hear about is how wonderful the classes have been. Without doing any substantial EC’s, our child has blossomed and grown and absolutely loves her academic work. I know she is not alone: many of her friends are the same. Her brother, who went to a different but equally rigorous school, was less intellectual and more practical, and spent most of is time in the computer lab. Both are happy with their experiences.</p>
<p>Different strokes, etc. I am glad the author got a bit of a wake-up call, so that he doesn’t regret missing out entirely on the academic depth available to him. I hope he enjoys his studies for the remaining time he has at Harvard. Internal motivation moves him at the Crimson, and it would be nice if he found that same internal motivation for classes.</p>
<p>I think Harvard accepts people with the idea that they are motivated for something, and that they don’t need a hand to hold them or a professor to prod them, beyond the obvious prod of the grading system itself (and our kid doesn’t actually seem to look at grades at all).</p>
<p>And, hey, the Crimson is also a great focus.</p>
<p>Shhhh . . . the entitlement perspective and immaturity expressed in the article is out there and gives other more grounded kids an edge. Son puts classes first, ECs second. The transcript is forever. And the opportunity to study under such an amazing faculty is fleeting.</p>
<p>" I once knew a prof who docked a whole letter from the grade for each day a term paper was late. Others were lenient…"</p>
<p>Lol, I consider letter grade docks lenient.</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>I’ve had profs that say nuh-uh, no way, you didn’t turn it in when it was due, big fat zero for ya.</p>
<p>Maybe Harvard DOES need to get harder.</p>
<p>Not Harvard. Individual profs. Profs have autonomy in their classes. Plenty of profs everywhere who are just as lenient. That’s why there is “Incomplete” as a place holder.
Some profs do think that it’s more important that the student learn something and turn in well-written papers, albeit a bit late, than turn in rubbish on time.</p>
<p>I agree that docking one letter grade per day late is quite lenient for Harvard professors.</p>
<p>I find this article to be limited in many respects. Mr. Flow largely seems to be addressing humanities courses - in these, it is indeed possible, as it is in every single other university, to binge study, largely due to the structure of these courses. The only way a professor could prevent binge studying would be to institute periodic quizzes or have one-on-one check-ins. For Harvard, these measures would be quite patronizing and not befitting of adults, since they would limit our independence. For humanities courses, we work on the big piece - the term paper, the final exam - because the big piece is a true product of hard work. Remember that humanities classes are typically graded on an absolute scale (no curving), and the product of one student’s binge studying can typically get one a B+ or an A-, due to the sheer talent and skills of that student. Throw a Yale student into the mix, and you couldn’t be sure: academics at Yale don’t share the same intensity, and the students there simply care less in general about them. Harvard students don’t face tradeoffs - One day? I can still bang out an incredible paper. It might mean speedreading through five books and typing for twelve to fourteen hours, but it can be done. </p>
<p>Yet the difference between the B+/A- and the A is the biggest part of Harvard. It is what separates the bingers from the killers. Some might argue that the abundance of B+/A-'s are a sign of grade inflation, but I’ve compared several Intro ‘History’ and Intro ‘Econ’ tests at Harvard and Yale, and I as well as others (i.e. my Harvard and Yale friends) have found the grading differences to be minimal.</p>
<p>In the sciences, Harvard is even more competitive, and strict curves and constant assessments (the only way to practice problems effectively - putting them to the task) keep nearly everyone on their feet.</p>
<p>Just wanted to note that Harvard does not have incompletes, even for kids who have an illness. </p>
<p>Also would note that plenty of classics majors (my husband for one) go to grad school!</p>
<p>Harvard has make-up exams for a variety of reasons. So, if a student is ill, the student can turn in the paper at around the time of the make-up exam, which is nearly a whole semester afterward.</p>
<p>No incompletes? Back in the day when dh got mono during reading period and was so sick he landed in the infirmary with Harvard med students admiring his condition he got incompletes in everything.</p>
<p>I think I may have posted this article a while back… too lazy to search!</p>
<p>@JHS: Of course, “You are responsible for your own education”! But when the only lasting evaluation of your work in a class is the final grade, and you know you can pull an A/A-/B+ with some reading period cramming, and there’s a giant crisis with the newspaper (/play/sitcom/conference)… would you put it off to savor Kant at a reasonable pace?</p>
<p>I took a great class on Psychology and Economics, where we learned how horribly irrational people are when it comes to going to the gym. People will grossly and willingly overpay for gym memberships, if the membership is structured so that it incentives going to the gym.</p>
<p>To me, the article seems to be a plea for this kind of help – structure Harvard so that (be it by carrot or stick) students are incentivized to read deeply, rather than skim - to ponder and discuss issues before writing papers, rather than plucking a random idea at 9 p.m. the night before. As students we want to do these things, just like people want to go to the gym… we’d just like incentives to help us do them.</p>
<p>(And for what it’s worth, most of my TFs docked papers by 1/3 of a letter grade for every day it was late (i.e. B –> B-), and I didn’t find the curves in the sciences that “strict” - even premed classes had a mean + median in the high B, low B+ range).</p>
<p>Not to hijack this thread, but if anyone knows more about the incompletes issue, please refer me to the source. We have been told there are no incompletes, period, at Harvard. Our daughter finished 2/3 of a semester, then had to go on medical leave due to an illness. The issue of incompletes came up at that time.</p>
<p>My daughter says that papers can be late if you are ill, but have to be in by the end of marking period. Perhaps she is wrong. Or perhaps incompletes only apply to papers that are the equivalent of exams (because an illness at that time, and only at that time, would preclude finishing by the end of the semester).</p>
<p>She is very happy with Harvard, and this is not a complaint. She likes to meet her own standards, as well as theirs. But it would be helpful for the future if we know for sure that others have had incompletes.</p>
<p>Compmom:</p>
<p>check the student handbook under Extension for Lab or Written Work; also make-up examinations.</p>