This is the second in a three-part series on A Decanal Decision.

For the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), choosing which departments get to hire new faculty is much like a parent choosing a favorite child. While those lucky departments express their euphoria, everyone else is filled with jealousy and complains relentlessly. When making these decisions we hope his or her attention will be dominated by balancing two main concerns: the demand for teaching and the University’s research priorities.

The ongoing faculty expansion will dominate the list of problems with which the new FAS dean will have to deal, and it will take all of his or her intellect, political acumen, and strength to rise to the challenge. He or she will, however, have a blueprint, albeit a flawed one, in the form of a letter to the Faculty written by Interim Dean Jeremy R. Knowles.

In the letter, Knowles proposes that nearly every professorship added by the faculty expansion go to the sciences. That’s not to say that non-science departments will get no new professors; they will be able to replace departing and retiring faculty to maintain their size and may be able to expand their size if they are able to woo a donor to endow a chair. But most of the money FAS is pouring into the expansion will, according to Knowles, go towards hiring new scientists. Knowles justifies this by comparing Harvard to peer institutions, which reveals that Harvard lags behind in science hires.

Knowles is right to make the sciences a top research priority because science will in large part define the great 21st Century research institution. Science research plays an important role in Harvard’s societal mission, and as science becomes increasingly complex and specialized, it will take a larger science faculty to stay at the top. These facts have been recognized not only by FAS but by the entire University, which is why science lies at the heart of the planned Allston expansion and at the top of the Corporation’s agenda.

What Knowles’ plan misses, however, is that Harvard has a large teaching shortfall in the social sciences because a high portion of the student body concentrates in the social sciences. This leads to higher student-to-faculty ratios, overburdened faculty, and lower student satisfaction scores.

Knowles defended his decision to ignore “raw teaching need” by pointing out that “even if the hiring of new faculty could be nimble enough to respond to changing student interests, we are a Faculty, not a factory.” But Harvard students have demonstrated a sustained interest in the social sciences and humanities, and even as the dean promises student-faculty ratios will not get any higher in these in-demand areas, they certainly will not get any lower.

Beyond hiring with both research and teaching priorities in mind, the new FAS dean should also consider borrowing the time of faculty from across the University to alleviate the teaching crunch. While FAS has a high student-faculty ratio in the social sciences, there are many top-notch teachers at places like the Kennedy School of Government and the Graduate School of Education who would love to teach liberal arts courses to undergraduates. Currently, Harvard’s other faculties are an underutilized resource. The new dean should take steps to facilitate such inter-school cooperation which would improve pedagogy, student-faculty contact, and advising, particularly in the social sciences. Such a solution not only makes practical sense, but given that FAS would pay a fraction of a full professor’s salary to get someone to teach a course, it makes financial sense as well.

Decisions that involve sending large amounts of money one way or another—like hiring—will always be controversial. The new FAS dean would best be served by balancing to teaching and research needs when making such decisions.