Harvard Should Overhaul Its Mediocre Advising

In an interview with the Crimson last week, Elizabeth Nathans, the new dean of first-year students, said that working on the advising system is one of the tasks topping her agenda.

That is welcome news. Harvard should be embarrassed by the quality of its undergraduate education, and advising is one of the system's weakest links.

Nathans appears to be highly qualified to improve the advising program for first-year students. She is the creator of a much-praised pre-major advising program at Duke University which assigned every first-year to a faculty member advisor.

Nathans said she doesn't think a similar program would work at Harvard. Although she said she hopes to involve faculty more in the advising process, she said she believes this will be a difficult goal to achieve with Harvard's busy faculty and the present advising setup, which often revolves around entryway proctors.

It is a shame that Nathans will not implement the advising program here--and even more of a shame if it is true that Harvard's faculty would not be willing to give their time to such a program.

The great weaknesses of Harvard's undergraduate education are that classes are large and impersonal and that contact with faculty is all often minimal. First-year seminars are only a token effort to change this, and many students who apply for these seminars are rejected.

Graduate students conduct most of the advising that students get during their time at Harvard. Sometimes this system works fine. Graduate students know the ropes and their proximity in age to undergraduates facilitates easy communication.

But faculty members have academic wisdom that graduate students lack. they can help motivate and push students to succeed with tools that the average graduates students need in an advisor is experience, and that is what the faculty is member can offer.

Nathans says that getting faculty more involved will be difficult because the Harvard faculty is overcommitted.

As a former faculty reporter for The Crimson, I know this is true. Faculty members must juggle teaching duties, research projects, departmental administrative duties and their personal lives. And I know many professors also have important commitments outside the University, such as attending and speaking at conferences.

This is a question of priority. It is my belief that Harvard faculty members' first and foremost commitment must be to the education of their students.

Assigning every first-year to a faculty member would help achieve this. Faculty advisors could stay with their students through all four years and serve as guides on both general and specific academic questions.

A system organized along the same lines as Nathans' Duke program would not be impossible to implement here--even if one were to expand it to more than just first-years and included all undergraduates.

There are currently 393 tenured faculty and 227 junior professors, making for a total of 720 faculty members, With about 1600 first-year, there are about 2.2 students for every faculty member. Over four years that means about nine students. If each faculty semester for an hour, the total time expenditure for professors would be 27 hours per semester.

Twenty-seven hours is a significant amount of time. Faculty members would have to change some commitments and priorities. But the extra work is certainly worth the payoff. A system such as this would dramatically boost the quantity and quality of the University's advising for all student.

To make change in the system successful, however, Harvard must change its attitude toward advising and its attitude toward education. Currently, the responsibility to get advising rests squarely on the students' shoulders once the first year is over. Harvard believes that its students should learn to take the initiative and help themselves; Mother Harvard doesn't coddle her young, after all.

But this is not the same attitude Harvard takes with its academic curriculum. Students aren't just given a reading list and told to finish it. For $22,000, students are given professors that lecture on the topic and teaching fellows that run small sections on the premise that there is some advantage to personal contact.

Nathans told the Crimson that"...the people who hook into the system early get the most out of a place like this," she is right, of course. But not only should students hook into the advising system, the system should hook into them.

The University knows that for many students being given a reading list is simply not motivation enough to do the reading.

Advising is much the same way. When students are given the name of an advisor they have little motivation to meet with that person. It is like having a reading list without a class or a teacher to back it up. Faculty may think themselves too busy to meet with students, but the opposite is also true--many students find their lives too crammed with activities to squeeze in a visit to an advisor.

To facilitate a change in attitude the College needs to mandate meetings between advisors and advisees. This is already done to a certain extent for first-year students. It should be done for everyone.

Of course, no one can force communication, but such a system would do a lot to increase the opportunity to talk.

If the college were to mandate a set number of meetings between faculty and students each semester it would shift the responsibility for advising a little. Currently that responsibility unfairly rests on the students alone. Advising should be a duty that is shared by the College and the student.

During my first year at Harvard I was convinced that the Harvard advising system was the best thing about the system was the best thing about the place. My proctor was my advisor. We chatted each week at a study break and at our weekly Nintendo game. We met formally at least three times each semester. He knew what was up with me and was able to give advice on classes, extracurriculars and life.

I saw downside of the system my second year. I was assigned a house tutor. He's a really nice guy. I guess I've spoken to him twice--once at our introductory meeting with the seven others he technically advises, and one other time when I called him about whether I should take a Core or a concentration class. He told me do whatever I wanted. Wrong answer.

Sophomore year, I lived next to an entry-way tutor. I met him, once all year. My roommate and I knocked on his door at two in the morning during finals period to ask him to turn down his stereo.

Last fall, I went to get my study card signed by my concentration advisor, only to find she wouldn't sign it unless I changed one of the classes I'd written down. The long and short of if is it cost me and additional 30 bucks: $15 because I had to drop a class, and $15 more because I screwed up the bubble dots when I changed my course load.

I realize it was my fault that I didn't seek her out sooner. But shouldn't the concentration have required a meeting to ensure that I knew the rules, and not juist have sprung them on me at the last minute?

So the next semester I went a week early to meet my advisor and talk about courses and requirements. She missed her office hours. Pressed for time, I did not returns until the day before study cards were due to get a hasty signature.

It is certainly true that I have not utilized Harvard's facilities to their fullest, but I am arguing that it should not be just my responsibility. Harvard should provide students with better, more experienced advisors who want to take the time to work with undergraduates, and they should make it mandatory for both the student and the professor to participate.

Harvard students are paying not just to educate themselves, but also to have Harvard educate them. Students expect not only excellent classes, but also the guidance necessary to take full advantage of those classes. They deserve more than a careless signature on a study card once a semester.