Word: curricularly
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After last week’s release of the Harvard College Curricular Review (HCCR), the future of the concentration system looks bleak. The central suggestions found in Section V of the HCCR report prescribe a significant reform of the present structure that stands to compromise the academic experience of vast numbers of undergraduates—especially, and most unfortunately, for those currently engaged in the sort of international and interdisciplinary study the curricular review aspires to provide for every student. While the report provides commendable solutions for improvements within the existing departments, the College would do well to abandon plans...
This is not the only instance in which the curricular review’s proposals seem self-defeating. The delayed declaration date is intended to give students more time to consider their options before committing to a concentration. While the report correctly identifies that nearly one-third of undergraduates switch concentrations at least once, it mistakes the primary reason for such a move. Admittedly, some students may be converted by late exposure to an entirely different field, but many more discover their dislike for their concentration only upon becoming involved in serious study. For this majority, a later start date...
With Monday's release of the report on the Harvard College curricular review, administrators seem to have outdone what they often do best, penning 60 pages of stunningly bland and half-baked recommendations that straddle the line between unspecific and impossible. Perhaps the most stunning suggestion to come out of the document is—gasp—that Harvard should make its curriculum better. What exactly that means and how that might be done is, evidently, left as an exercise to the reader...
...interesting to note how the curricular review might affect concentrators in Economics—home to the most undergraduates and, incidentally, Summers’ own department. The review’s proposals of a centralized advising center will find few friends in Economics, which already has such a system—one where students can get a quick answer to a question from an advisor who knows nothing about you (and doesn’t much care). The department is too large to seriously implement the report’s suggestions of increased freshman seminars and freshman advising. The average...
...have either not yet bothered to read the report or are deeply disappointed in its contents. Unlike the two prior reviews in the 1940s and 1970s, this one hasn’t successfully excited—or even involved—much of anyone. Half the goal of a curricular review is to reinspire faculty to a school’s teaching mission; the other half is to fix the curriculum. This week, College administrators failed to accomplish either...