Improved Advising, Finally?

On Feb. 14, 1955, The Crimson ran a news story proclaiming that “Upperclass advisers may be available to all College freshmen next year.” On May 15, 1974—19 years later—students were still holding their breath. Then-Crimson staff writer Robert Field announced, “A program to match incoming freshmen with upperclass advisers will be expanded next year to include most members of the freshman class.” Obviously, needed reform takes a long time at Harvard. But we hope that it doesn’t take decades for the Harvard College Curricular Review report’s recent recommendations on improving advising at Harvard to take effect.

Student dissatisfaction with College advising has almost become a given. First-year advising is inconsistent at best with far too many first-years only going to their advisers for signatures on their study cards and plans of study. And advising does not get much better in the concentrations—particularly in large ones, where students can go three years without substantive academic advice on course selection.

So the report’s recommendation to increase faculty-student contact is laudable. The report advocates major changes in the way faculty approach advising, calling on them to think of advising as something on par with “a major committee assignment.” Indeed, the culture of advising must change. Harvard purports to offer a world-class education to its students; world-class advising should be part of the package. Individual concentration advisers and student-faculty dinners, two of the report’s proposals, are both steps in the right direction, serving to personalize what can be a highly impersonal academic experience. The review should go even further and wean the responsibility of advising away from graduate students except the few who possess an intimate knowledge of the Harvard undergraduate experience.

The proposed central advising office is also a good idea, and it will be particularly important if the College follows through on the report’s suggestion to shift the concentration decision deadline to the fall term of sophomore year. As acknowledged by the report, however, the advising center should only be used in a back-up capacity for general curricular advice and should not take the place of direct faculty involvement in pre-concentration advising. Such a center will also need a dedicated, involved staff interested in speaking to students about individual curricular concerns, unlike the disappointing advising center the economics department has set up.

On May 23, 1956, Crimson staff writer John G. Wofford observed, “Over fifty years after Charles M. Flaundrau wrote his ‘Diary of a Freshman,’ criticism of the advising system in the freshman year is still just as strong.” Today, it is probably even stronger. One-fifth of undergraduates surveyed by The Crimson in December identified advising as the most important issue for the curricular review to address—behind only the Core and general education. Though the recommendations are now in place, and many of them are good, turning words into action—in fewer than 19 years—will prove to be the real challenge in the College’s advising overhaul.