Offer Harvard advisers a penny for their thoughts on the advising system, and they’ll tell you that it doesn’t work.

“We must overhaul the system by which students are, and more often, are not, given academic advice by faculty,” Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby wrote in the “mission statement” for Harvard’s ongoing curricular review.

One fifth of students in a December Crimson survey identified advising as the most important issue for the curricular review to address, second only to the Core and general education.

But some of the curricular changes the leaders of the review are pushing could make the advising system even worse.

As a committee reviewing concentration choice prepares to recommend delaying that decision until the middle of sophomore year, members of the committee charged with saving the College’s already beleaguered advising system are scrambling to figure out what they will do with the new crowd of uncertain sophomores.

The committee could propose the creation of a centralized advising center that would be geared toward students whose concentrations are undeclared. The Freshman Dean’s Office (FDO) may be phased out of its role directing first-year academic advising.

But faculty worry that the same problems plaguing the current advising system—including difficulties getting students to come see their advisers—would hurt the center. And some department officials are skeptical that professional advisers could grasp the in and outs of the concentrations.

Also on the table are models based upon the advising system at Princeton and at Yale (see story, page 6), which would shift advising to rely more on faculty and resident tutors while phasing out first-year proctors. But these ideas are widely seen as placing infeasible burdens on the resident tutors and faculty—many of whom may be reluctant advisers in the first place.

As the recommendations of the Working Group on Students’ Overall Academic Experience become public at the end of the month, there is no certainty that their proposals will make a positive difference to students in search of advising.

AN AILING SYSTEM

Faculty and students widely criticize first-year advising—which culminates in the choice of concentration—as the area most in need of overhaul.

Victoria L. Sprow ’06, who serves on the working group examining advising, says her committee found first-year advising to be inconsistent. Under the system, most first-years are advised academically by the dorm proctors, but others are assigned an adviser from a pool of administrative staff from around the College and a small number of faculty volunteers.

“As far as freshman advising goes, some students had their advisers living in the same dorm with them, which was great, but some did not,” Sprow writes in an e-mail. “Also, some students felt like their advisers were not too familiar with the Harvard academic system. And, many advisers currently also act in a disciplinary role, which can cause problems.”

Undergraduate Council president Matthew W. Mahan ’05 cites unknowledgeable proctors as a major impediment to first-years’ exploring the curriculum and course catalogue.

“It’s unreasonable that we have first-years who come in super-excited and super-confused, and their proctor who doesn’t know enough about the curriculum. I know so many people who are dissatisfied with their early-on advising,” Mahan says.