"I think some people might have a little problem at first." Boulas comments, "but they settle down.

In most other courses the selection process is less gruelling. For AM 113, "Introduction to Programming Languages". Thomas Cheatham Jr., McKay Professor of Computer Science, tries to use the students who had the best grades the last time he taught the course.

"It's working beautifully," Cheatham says. "It's their own peer group, and they relate to them very well."

He adds that the scarcity of graduate students in his department has an unexpected benefit. "I find it an excellent way to work with undergraduates in a way that you don't often get the opportunity to," Cheatham says.

Students teaching and taking the undergraduates' sections also praise the peer relationship that can develop in the situation. In some cases, though, where the student is older than, or the same age as, the instructor, things can be a little awkward.

When Craig Partridge '83 taught AS 11, "Computers, Algorithms, and Programs" for the first time last year, he says, "I was teaching seniors--it was a little strange." But Partridge adds that "it is not terribly difficult if you look at it as the fact that you know more about the subject than the students."

Mark S. Sandona, a sixth-year graduate student in Comparative Literature who has a senior as his AS 10 section leader, says. "No, it doesn't feel strange at all--she knows more about it than I do."

Younger students are especially perceptive to the undergraduates. Reena B. Gordon '86 praises her AS 11 section leader, a senior: "He is very well aware of how it feels to be a student in the course because he only took it last year."

In all of the courses affected, the nature of the subject matter is very highly structured and the teaching fellows are carefully supervised. Several professors say that despite these precautions against what Verba calls "letting it get out of hand," they would still prefer to hire graduate students.

"It's a situation where there is no choice," says Nathan Goodman, assistant professor of Computer Science, of AM 110, "Introduction to Systems Programming." Goodman adds, "It's much superior to use grad students over undergrads, but we simply need to use them."

Many professors cite the fact that high salaries in the high-technology industries lure college graduates away from academic life and into the job market as a main reason for the shortage of teaching fellows.

Though very happy with the quality of his undergraduate section leaders, Philip A. Bernstein, associate professor of Computer Science, says. "If I could hire more experienced, older people to teach [AS 10], I would."

But Bernstein says, "It's just a matter of supply and demand--the industry's growing faster than the rate at which we can produce people," and adds. "It's a nationwide problem, not unique to Harvard."

Private-sector salaries starting at $25,000 also draw junior faculty members from the classroom, and those who remain are pressed into service as course heads. Bernstein says, "It's just a matter of not wanting to have a professor teaching" a section.

In addition, undergraduates sometimes make better instructors in a course like AS 10 where the subject matter is elementary and requirements stress quality of teaching and ability to communicate with students.