Administration Hopes to Buck Stereotype

A month before pre-frosh descend on campus to decide if they will accept Harvard’s offer of admission, the University suffered another serious blow last week to its prestigious image.

After the leak of confidential 2002 survey results placing Harvard student satisfaction near the bottom of a group of elite institutions, the administration found itself on the defensive again, following two months marked by controversy over University President Lawrence H. Summers’ remarks on women in science.

The comparatively low rating of faculty accessibility and social life confirmed the long-held stereotype that, despite Harvard’s reputation as the gold standard of education, the University in many ways fails to meet the needs of its undergraduate needs.

The confidential internal memo, revealing Harvard’s finish at fifth from the bottom in the 2002 survey of the 31 colleges comprising the Consortium on Financing Higher Education, is especially significant because it compares Harvard’s social and academic performance to its closest competitors.

Harvard students’ overall satisfaction of 3.95 on a five-point scale, compared to the 4.16 average of the other schools, indicates that while Harvard students are mostly satisfied with their experience, they are less satisfied than their peers.

“One sees that these differences among colleges are really quite small. The overall level of satisfaction is really quite high by the world’s standards,” said Director of Undergraduate Admissions Marlyn McGrath Lewis ’70-’73.

But Harvard administrators have acknowledged that when competing for the world’s top students, Harvard must have more than passing marks.

“We’re always concerned about..,getting students who we spent so much time considering and comparing to other applicants,” McGrath Lewis said.

Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 has stressed that since he took office in 2003, he has made it a priority to reduce the problems that have led to Harvard’s lower satisfaction ratings. But it remains to be seen whether these efforts will translate into improved marks from a critical student body—or whether they will reassure nervous pre-frosh that they can have a positive experience in Cambridge.

SOCIAL LIFE SOLUTION?

The College has attempted to combat the poor social life ratings by taking a much more active role and making a concerted effort to improve weekend activities on campus.

“There has been a lot of change since 2002,” said Undergraduate Council (UC) Student Affairs Committee Chair Aaron D. Chadbourne ’06. “Even look at the administrators, they’ve mostly all been replaced. They’ve all been doing a lot in the last few years…So I don’t think that the data is completely accurate.”

The administration’s new role in campus life comes as the result of a complete overhaul in the Office of Student Activities (OSA) after the dramatic restructuring of the College under Gross’ leadership.

Since Associate Dean of the College Judith H. Kidd took the reins of the OSA in 2003, the same year Gross became dean, the College has attempted to tackle difficult issues such as the shortage of student spaces, party policies, and social alternatives to final clubs.

With an expanded role in the administration, the OSA’s staff has grown to four members—including recent alumnus Zachary A Corker ’04, the special assistant to the dean for social programming. Corker’s position was created for the 2004-2005 academic year after he proposed the plan to the Dean’s office last summer.

While the 2002 survey data faulting Harvard’s social life has received widespread media coverage in the past week, Harvard’s creation of a position specifically designed to help students have more fun was ridiculed in the press in January. Fox News host Bill O’Reilly called it his “Most Ridiculous Item of the Day.” But positions such as Corker’s are part of the student activities staff at many universities.

The expanded staff of the OSA can boast an impressive list of achievements from the last two years.

This fall, the OSA introduced a new online event registration system, eliminating a number of the logistical barriers to planning social events on campus.

In November the OSA and the UC planned a Harvard-Yale tailgate in the face of mounting pressure from an increasingly vigilant Boston Police Department. The OSA eventually footed the bill for more than $20,000 of the costs for the event.

In January, Kidd and Assistant Dean of the College Paul J. McLoughlin II successfully convinced the Cambridge Licensing Commission to extend party hours to 2 a.m.

And this spring Corker instituted a series of Pub Nights in Loker Commons, which may pave the way for a million-dollar renovation of the space this summer to turn it into a permanent student-run pub, an idea that has received strong support from top administrators.

“Dean Kirby is the person who said that we need a pub,” Deputy Dean of the College Patricia O’Brien said in March. “Bill Kirby wants a pub, we’ve got to give it a try.”

AGONIZING OVER ACADEMICS

The leaked memo with the survey results highlighted poor faculty availability and large lecture courses as key problems which the College must address if it seeks to close its

rating gap with other schools.

While administrators cannot force professors to hold more office hours or become more available to students, they have primarily pursued a policy of expansion, hoping this will increase the course offerings and bring down the average class size.

Attempts to remedy the relatively high student-to-faculty ratio by increasing the size of the faculty have been in the works since at least 2000. Then-Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles announced a plan to expand the Faculty by 10 percent over 10 years. But recently, Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby has said that he intends to outstrip the original goal, expanding the faculty to 750 members by 2010 and potentially reaching 800 after that.

The curricular review is the other main weapon in the limited arsenal of the administration. The freshman seminar program has been expanded, and Summers and University Provost Steven E. Hyman have both taught seminars.

Gross remains hopeful that many of the remaining factors limiting students’ academic satisfaction will be addressed when the faculty votes on the curricular review proposals.

Yet even if these initiatives are successfully implemented, whether this will help current students is a looming question.

“A lot of these issues have been coming up in the past year with the curricular review, but we want to make sure that we can have some changes implemented in the short term too,” Chadbourne said.

The College will have to wait for more updated polling results to see if the heavy investment in social and academic reform will result in higher student satisfaction.

Harvard’s ability to remain at the head of the pack in the future may depend on whether or not it can solve the concerns highlighted in the 2002 survey results.

This exposure may also be positive for Harvard, since it emphasizes to both the administration and students that these issues need to be addressed.

“Any way that we can make people aware of the issues that are important to students is good. Things take long at Harvard, but hopefully this will speed things up,” Chadbourne said.

—Margaret W. Ho contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Joshua P. Rogers can be reached at jprogers@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Nicole B. Urken can be reached at urken@fas.harvard.edu.