Harvard’s Having Too Much Fun

Harvard lectures are getting more fun. Our finals aren’t.

Harvard is in the midst of reassessing its academic culture. In October, the Office of Undergraduate Education released a report arguing for grading reform at the College. From that report came a discreet but pertinent admission: Q Guide course evaluations shape how professors teach, pushing them to prioritize fun over learning.

Fun can be great, but it’s not the most important thing in the classroom. Harvard must recalibrate the Q Guide — starting with more specific prompts for student testimonials — to truly recenter academics.

The Q Guide emerges as a major source of tension in the report. Teaching Fellows worry low scores will hurt their job prospects. Tenure-track faculty are concerned poor reviews will jeopardize their chances of tenure. Even tenured faculty are anxious that an unflattering Q score will deter undergraduates from choosing their concentrations.

This pressure to raise Q scores is infecting the Harvard lecture hall. Course content now feels engineered for entertainment, distracting from learning rather than supporting it.

Fun lectures are not inherently problematic. Good professors engage students, and fun is engaging. But fun, even as a pedagogical tool, can dilute and even replace course content, changing the classroom from a place of learning to a makeshift stage. These performances are hard to miss.

I have sat through economics lectures featuring Doge memes and scenes from “The Wolf of Wall Street.” In GOV 1090: “Biotech Ethics,” example problems center situationships, human-robot sex, and — somewhat shockingly — bestiality. No doubt, these moments are memorable. That’s precisely the problem.

Content destined for Sidechat virality overshadows broader — and more relevant — course topics. Students often leave class discussing these examples rather than the concepts they were intended to illustrate. Though such moments may be said to serve a pedagogical purpose, that purpose collapses when students are digesting the wrong things, and professors are using these pedagogical tools for the wrong reasons. The spectacle sticks; the substance slips away.

The Q Guide suggests that this phenomenon is not random. Student testimonials often praise courses they describe as “fun.” One Biotech Ethics review reads, “I had so much fun every day in class and section.” Others similarly characterize the class as “fun,” even as they admit they have “little” or “no idea” what grade they will earn, given the class’s scarcity of work. A review of Economics 10B: “Principles of Economics” encourages prospective students to enroll because the course is “actually fun — for once.”

When “fun” becomes a primary benchmark of success, professors learn quickly what students reward — and they adjust accordingly.

Harvard students’ academic lives feel increasingly demanding as the threat of limited A’s looms large. Now more than ever, our midterms and finals seem to demand real fluency with course content. A shocking exhibition can certainly make lectures more engaging, yet such displays lack depth. When finals season comes — and with it, profoundly unfrivolous exams — Harvard students will be confronted with the fact that engagement does not connote true understanding.

To be clear, I am not indicting fun in the classroom as a whole. Well-placed cultural allusions can illuminate inaccessible material; moments of levity can disrupt the monotony of long lectures. I believe few students would posit that Harvard needs more wearisome professors. Still, engagement is meant to serve learning, not upstage it.

Harvard professors should not feel pressure to perform. The goal of lecture is not to engineer fun for the sake of engagement. It is to aid in the students’ synthesis of difficult material. Levity has a place in the classroom. But comprehension — not applause — should be the metric that matters.

As Harvard seeks to combat grade inflation and reintroduce rigor, so too should it reconsider the incentives built into its course evaluations. If the Q Guide determines how professors teach, then it must be part of Harvard’s broader academic reformation crusade. A system that rewards entertainment over education will encourage professors’ performance, not students’ learning.

Reformation does not entail foregoing feedback. Harvard must continue to center student testimony. However, when the Q Guide promotes both professorial performance and grade inflation, it is due for a realignment. The student testimonials portion of the Q Guide must be recalibrated to reflect course clarity, rigor, and effective exam preparation. Doing so would motivate professors to prioritize teaching rather than theatrics and dubiously earned A’s.

Harvard professors do not need less personality. If anything, we could all use more freely given smiles from our professors. We simply need clearer academic incentives, ones that inspire our faculty and students alike to find “fun” in learning.

Sasha A. Cavell ’29, a Crimson Editorial comper, lives in Weld Hall.