Word: sectioning
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Undergraduates and their parents have the right to be furious with Harvard College. We pay a staggering sum for what is supposed to be the best college education in the country. But the shortage of faculty and graduate-student section leaders has led the administration to look the other way on the practice of peer undergraduate teaching and grading--routinely in more quantitative disciplines such as computer science and sometimes even in the Core. How can we be getting our money's worth if our classmates are allowed to teach us and evaluate our work...
...statement allows for interpretation, but this is not supposed to be one of those qualified statements the administration is so found of making, which usually begin with "ordinarily." Indeed, Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education Jeffrey Wolcowitz asserted in an e-mail that his office, which oversees spending for section teaching, "read[s] the `should not' with the force of wrong and inappropriate...
Susan Lewis, the director of the Core program (which oversees its own section hiring), stated in an e-mail, "Core courses don't hire undergraduates to teach sections. If they can't staff with teaching fellows or teaching assistants, they lottery the course." It should follow from these assertions that undergraduates do not grade the subjective work of their peers at the College. Unfortunately, the facts prove otherwise...
...state in the specific case you cite, it is the exception rather than the rule in the role that course assistants play." This parsed statement only underscores the fact that there is no rule at Harvard College regarding peer undergraduate grading. Despite what the EPC may have intended, section hiring is essentially left to the discretion of course heads...
After she started talking about her academic plans in a section for Social Analysis 10: "Principles of Economics," she was barraged with question from curious classmates...