Students Less Satisfied

Prevalent stereotypes about how Harvard undergraduates have less fun than their peers found empirical confirmation last Tuesday, when the Boston Globe reported that Harvard students gave lower ratings to their college experience than students at other elite schools in a 2002 survey.

An internal Harvard memo analyzing data from the survey found that Harvard students rated their overall satisfaction at 3.95 on a five-point scale, compared to an average of 4.16 at the 30 other schools surveyed, the Globe reported. Harvard students gave lower ratings than students at peer institutions to the level of interaction with faculty members and the quality of social life.

This satisfaction rating placed Harvard fifth from the bottom in the survey of the 31 colleges in the Consortium on Financing Higher Education (COFHE). The COFHE includes all eight Ivy League schools, other top research universities such as MIT and Stanford University, and leading small liberal arts schools such as Amherst College and Williams College.

After the release of the data last week, administrators said the issues of social life and quality of instruction raised in the survey have guided their priorities in recent years, pointing to the ongoing curricular review and new initiatives to bolster campus activities.

“That’s exactly what we’ve been focusing on for the past three years,” Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 wrote in an e-mail.

University President Lawrence H. Summers and Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby could not be reached for comment.

In a statement, Vice President for Government, Community, and Public Affairs Alan J. Stone said, “Making sure that Harvard works to improve the undergraduate experience has been a key priority for President Summers since he first arrived on campus.”

The data, the most recent available for comparison, was outlined in a memo sent from Harvard analysts to deans that was dated Oct. 2004 and marked “confidential,” according to the Globe. The memo noted that the difference in student satisfaction ratings between Harvard and other institutions has existed since at least 1994.

But the latest results do represent a small increase. According to a Winter 2001 Harvard College Parents Newsletter, the Class of 2000 rated their overall satisfaction at 3.86.

Gross declined to comment on the accuracy of the numbers, citing reasons of confidentiality. But he said the College is currently attempting to gather more student feedback by participating in the COFHE studies more frequently and conducting surveys of graduates with the Harvard Alumni Association.

‘CULTURE OF BUSY-NESS’

According to the survey, Harvard averaged a 2.62 for its campus social life, compared to an average rating of 2.89 at other schools, and netted a 2.53 for its sense of community, compared to 2.8 at other COFHE institutions, the Globe reported.

Gross noted that, in response to concerns about social life, administrators have taken steps such as expanding student activity space and extending party hours to 2 a.m.

Last fall, the College named Zachary A Corker ’04 to a newly-created position—special assistant to the dean for social programming—in an effort to expand campus-wide social opportunities. Corker has worked to coordinate events including the Harvard-Yale tailgate, two dodgeball tournaments, and a series of Loker Pub Nights.

Corker could not be reached for comment. Assistant Dean of the College Paul J. McLoughlin II, who oversees student life, declined to comment.

Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology Steven Pinker said he was surprised that students were unhappy with the social opportunities on campus when compared to peer institutions.

“My impression is that the residential houses at Harvard are intended to provide some of the social opportunities that elsewhere would be provided college-wide,” Pinker wrote in an e-mail. “The intense student life of Boston, with its eight major universities and lively bar and music scene, should, I would think, obviate some of the need for students to get their social and cultural needs met on the Harvard campus.”

Student leaders credited the administration with taking significant strides to improve social life, but added that Harvard students’ packed schedules left little time for recreation.

“We’re all really busy, and it takes a lot of time to work through the bureaucratic red tape of both the school and the city to organize any large social event,” Adams House Committee (HoCo) Chair Connie Zong ’06 wrote in an e-mail.

Dunster HoCo chair Andrew L. Kalloch ’06, who said he regularly fields requests from students seeking more social options, also speculated that a “culture of busy-ness” was responsible for the lagging social scene.

“I’d say it’s less the administration than it is a culture of having really driven students and top-notch professors,” he said.

Chair of the Department of Comparative Literature William Mills Todd III, former dean of undergraduate education, gave a similar assessment of the existing culture at the College.

“At the end of the day Harvard is a busy, tightly-wound research university,” he wrote in an e-mail. “President Summers’ estimate of 80-hour work weeks is probably close to the mark. This can, and does, make Harvard an exhilarating place for students and faculty who are engaged in their academic work and in intellectual issues.”

FACE TIME WITH FACULTY

In addition to the results on social life, the poll analysis indicated that Harvard also fell behind other schools by a small margin in faculty availability, quality of instruction, and quality of advising, the Globe reported.

Faculty availability at Harvard averaged a 2.92 rating compared to an average of 3.39 at peer institutions, quality of instruction received a 3.16 rating compared to 3.31 at other schools, and quality of advising within majors netted a 2.54 compared to a 2.86 at other COFHE schools, the Globe reported.

Kenan Professor of Government Harvey C. Mansfield ’53 said these results did not surprise him.

“Nobody can say that Harvard students are complacent. I think their intelligence makes them critical,” he said.

Mansfield—one of the most outspoken critics of the Harvard faculty—laid the blame for these results at the faculty’s feet.

“I think the administration has a commitment to improving Harvard, but I don’t think the majority of the faculty does,” he said. “They are the ones who are complacent and deserve most of the criticism.”

Pinker praised Summers’ attempts to address undergraduate concerns about faculty availability. Pinker has been one of Summers’ most vocal supporters in recent months.

“Larry Summers deserves credit for trying to fix the situation, both by encouraging faculty to interact with students, and by pledging to hire more faculty to reduce the professor-student ratio,” he wrote.

According to Gross, his administration has sought to increase the number of students working closely with faculty in freshman and junior seminars.

He added that the ongoing curricular review is attempting to address many of the other student complaints highlighted by the survey data, such as providing more flexibility in general education requirements and better coordination of advising.

But some professors said they did not feel the curricular review could solve all of the concerns that students have raised.

“Faculty generally enjoy student contact whether individually or in small groups; but despite the admirable Freshman Seminars, I fear that the large-class format is with us for the foreseeable future,” Higginson Professor of History and of East Asian Languages and Civilizations Philip A. Kuhn wrote in an e-mail. “Under the demographics and economics of our present structure, I do not expect the Curricular Review to solve the problem, despite our best intentions.”

Jones Professor of American Studies Lizabeth Cohen, who co-chairs the curricular review’s Pedagogy Committee, said that the survey data, while outdated, helped steer the committee’s recommendations. But she said that increasing faculty contact would also require a change in student attitude.

“When I was Head Tutor in history and students would tell me in their senior year that they knew few faculty well, they would often admit that they had avoided small courses and had rarely made the effort to meet their professors in office hours, to invite them to a house dinner, and so forth,” she wrote in an e-mail. “We all need to work together to create a culture that encourages face-to-face intellectual interaction rather than mutual admiration from afar.”

And Undergraduate Council President Matthew J. Glazer ’06 said students had been promised a better advising system but were not yet seeing the results.

“The problems are still here. Advising is something that is supposed to be dealt with in the curricular review, but that process is slowing and students are in desparate need for advising right now,” he said.

Cabot Professor of American Literature Lawrence Buell, another former dean of undergraduate education, cautioned that the curricular review would only be able to address the existing academic problems if it is undertaken carefully.

“The ongoing curricular review has the potential to address the relevant questions substantively, but only if it is carried out deliberately, unhurriedly, and with maximum participation by both faculty and students,” Buell wrote. “This is not to be taken for granted. Harvard’s pressure cooker atmosphere tends to make administrators, faculty, and students all feel in too much of a hurry about such matters.”

—Nicole B. Urken contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Margaret W. Ho can be reached at mwho@fas.harvard.edu.

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