Enough Advice, More Advising

The freshman advising system just went from bad to worse.

On Tuesday, the College announced that it would eliminate the role of pre-concentration advisers for current and entering freshmen. Instead, students will complete online modules created by the Office of Undergraduate Education, participate in small-group advising sessions before course registration, and attend entryway advising meetings led by PAFs and proctors. The College also promised to connect freshmen with departments and central offices as they navigate course registration, and confirmed earlier this month that an AI chatbot would be available to answer students’ questions about classes and requirements.

The old freshmen advising system was ineffective and in need of reform, but this ambiguous, patchwork approach is about as ill-advised as next year’s freshmen will be.

The main issue with advising as it stands is the misallocation of responsibility and knowledge. First-year advisors can be faculty, graduate students, or even administrators who may know little about the undergraduate experience or courses offered.

In that respect, the new system represents an improvement. Departments know their own offerings best, so connecting them directly to freshmen will result in better information distribution.

But then there’s the problem of relationships. Freshmen need more than information, they need the support and fail-safes to make sure they act on it. A good advising relationship helps check in on a student’s trajectory and makes sure it’s aligned with the student’s goals and wellbeing.

Not only that, when a student has a dedicated advisor, it prevents the development of a free-rider problem. When advising is diluted, any given advisor can feel comfortable taking a backseat, limiting depth of engagement.

Because students enter Harvard with varying backgrounds, experiences, and networks, there exists an inequitable distribution of knowledge and quality relationships that leaves some unprepared to successfully navigate the College. Reform should counteract both issues.

The proposal also fails to address the insufficient breadth of the advising system. An ideal advisor should not be loyal to one discipline and can help a student assess the vast array of academic options the University provides.

The proposed model, centered on departments and faculty, risks siloing students into concentrations before they’re ready, undermining a liberal arts education.

Chatbots — when they’re not hallucinating — might help with the knowledge distribution problem, but they can’t address the need for human relationships, nor can they provide the stimulation of curiosity and exploration that the liberal arts contention requires.

Students, however, can solve these problems.

The proposal’s delegation of advising to PAFs is a great idea — done right. For a better system, Harvard should look to an unlikely source of inspiration: Yale.

At Yale, First-Year Counselors, known as “FroCos,” are seniors selected by each residential college to live alongside freshmen and advise them on academic and social life. The role is both highly demanding and generously compensated. A FroCo’s yearly stipend amounts to the cost of their room and board bill — as of last academic year, nearly $20,000.

Being a PAF at Harvard should likewise be a distinction reserved only for juniors and seniors who have explored across concentrations. The selection process should be rigorous, akin to electing students into Phi Beta Kappa, a prestigious honor society that recognizes “breadth of interest, depth of understanding, and intellectual honesty.” And in exchange for their increased contributions and higher expectations, PAFs should be paid accordingly.

If PAFs are going to be taking on the added responsibility of academic advising for first-years, we must ensure that only the best, most committed students are chosen for the job.

In addition to these top-notch PAFs, there should be plenty of informal opportunities for students to meet upperclassmen in fields they may want to pursue. Emphasis, might we add, on people. Organized events should help students gain experiential knowledge, the kind a chatbot can’t replace.

A confused cocktail of advising channels removes the training wheels before students are ready. Freshmen deserve high quality, personalized guidance from an upperclassman they know, trust, and can count on to keep showing up.

Diffuse responsibility for first-year advising is no responsibility at all.

This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.

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