“With a smaller concentration, better advising should be possible, but some structural changes might be helpful as well,” Gortler wrote in an e-mail.

However, Gortler also wrote that he believes the quality of teaching fellows in the department is very high, citing good CUE guide reviews and university-wide teaching awards.

According to the CUE guide, in the 2001-2002 academic year teaching fellows, in both CS50 and CS51 were widely described as “helpful” and “knowledgeable.” Over 50 percent of the students in each course found sections “helpful” or “essential.”

And not all students feel that the introductory courses CS50 and CS51 need to change.

Griswold said the courses are hard, but good and well-run.

Some students who had little or no previous experience prior to CS50 recommend the introductory sequence as well.

Hana Habayeb ’05, a computer science concentrator who described herself as extremely unskilled with computers when she arrived at Harvard says she enjoyed the introductory courses.

“I think everyone should be a CS concentrator,” she says. “And I got that from CS50 and 51.”

But with empty seats proliferating in computer science classes, the job prospects for teaching fellows—if not the students—remain grim.

—Staff writer Christina M. Anderson can be reached at anders6@fas.harvard.edu.