The most obvious way departments can invest in students is by hiring more teachers. Students complain about the size of their classes and the lack of advising at Harvard.

But new full faculty positions are extremely rare--at $3.5 million each, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences still hasn't managed to attract enough donors to reach the goal of 40 that it set for the capital campaign. When the fruits of the campaign are distributed, even large departments like the government department can only expect one or two new positions at most.

"When you get a position that's serious stuff--it's forever," says MacFarquhar, who is also Williams professor of history and political science.

So what happens when students' academic interests shift over time? Departments can't just add tenured professors at will.

"You have to make a choice: Maybe when Y retires you won't replace Y and get an X instead," MacFarquhar says.

But that kind of change is slow and gradual. In the meantime, departments have to hire visiting faculty--or just forgo classes. That's been the case in the department's American subfield, concentrators say.

"It's definitely been a problem," says Anna B. Benvenutti '00. "It's a little bit better now than in the past, but I took almost no classes in American government the whole time I've been here and that's supposed to be my area of concentration."

Department administrators acknowledge this hole in the government program.