At Harvard, Communication Should Be on the Syllabus

Harvard prides itself on excellence in teaching and learning. So why does getting an email back from our instructors feel like an academic achievement in itself?

For some Harvard students, the most frustrating part of a course isn’t understanding its material, but communicating with its teachers. As emails go unanswered and office hours are canceled without notice, students are left to navigate confusion on their own.

Professors and teaching fellows must take a more consistent approach to undergraduate education, prioritizing timely communication, productive office hours, and an environment in which students feel comfortable seeking guidance.

This ask, of course, is already required. Under the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ guidance for instructors, every member of a course’s teaching staff is required to hold office hours each week. But while the requirement exists, nothing seems to enforce it.

In theory, office hours are among the most valuable opportunities students have to engage with their instructors. They offer a chance to explore ideas beyond lectures, receive individualized feedback, and develop relationships that can extend beyond a single semester.

But in practice, office hours are not always accessible.

Students may rearrange their schedules to attend, only to discover that an instructor is unavailable or has failed to communicate a change. When these efforts repeatedly fail to result in meaningful support, the problem is no longer a lack of student initiative.

Communication flaws have been thrown into sharp relief by the ongoing Harvard Graduate Students Union strike. As graduate student workers participate in a strike amidst unresolved contract negotiations, students have faced further disruptions to academic support, particularly in larger lecture courses.

Teaching fellows participating in the strike should not be criticized for withholding labor as part of that collective action. Their working conditions deserve serious consideration, and Harvard has a responsibility to ensure that students’ educational needs are met during the disruption.

But we must not let the strike become an explanation for the persistent problems that preceded it. In my experience, communicating with teaching fellows was difficult long before their bargaining strategy to withhold crucial educational labor.

Why might the problem persist? Well, our instructors have responsibilities that extend far beyond the classroom. Between conducting research, publishing scholarship, advising students, and fulfilling departmental obligations, their schedules are undoubtedly demanding.

The problem might be that the obligations perceived to be well rewarded — publication and research — are not teaching tasks. Little in academic life rewards a timely reply or reliably held office hours more than end-of-semester teaching evaluations, which presently ask only one question about how “accessible” the instructor is. Effectively, students must enforce the FAS’s requirement, but with meager means of doing so.

Responsiveness should be a shared norm. Some instructors are already proving it’s a standard worth setting.

Throughout my time at Harvard, I have encountered professors who respond thoughtfully to emails, make themselves available outside class, and demonstrate a genuine investment in their students’ learning. Their courses are not necessarily easier, nor are their schedules any less demanding. Yet they have found ways to make their students feel supported.

At the start of the semester, I cold emailed a former professor and secured an opportunity to further my education as her research assistant. Getting to know my instructors on a personal level beyond the classroom makes me feel valued as a student and academic peer. But those relationships can only be built when my teachers answer my emails in the first place.

To get the most out of their classes, students need clear communication and consistent academic guidance. Professors should be expected to oversee their courses, but the FAS must ensure the school’s requirements are met.

Office hours should be held consistently, with cancellations or scheduling changes communicated in advance. Instructors should ensure that students leave these meetings with meaningful guidance rather than more unanswered questions. Professors and teaching fellows should also clearly communicate their expected email response times at the beginning of each semester, and abide by the standards they set.

To make these more than good intentions, department chairs or administrators should hold instructors to these standards. Course evaluations could directly ask whether office hours were held as scheduled, for example. Students could be given a way to flag repeated cancellations short of a formal complaint.

Now, of course, expecting professors to respond immediately to every email or provide unlimited individualized attention would be unrealistic. Yet, asking instructors to be accessible is not the same as asking them to be constantly available.

Students are in no need of round-the-clock attention or immediate responses, but rather reasonable communication, reliable office hours, and clear expectations — basic responsibilities that should accompany the privilege of teaching at Harvard.

After all, the measure of Harvard’s academic excellence should not be how difficult it is to reach our professors, but how far their guidance allows us to go.

Ally Hwang ’29, a Crimson Editorial editor, is an English concentrator in Winthrop House.