Only a handful of students typically approach economics concentration adviser Jonathan V. Hall ’06 in the days before the deadline for handing in completed study cards.
But on the day signed study cards are due, Hall says he witnesses a line of students that stretch inside the department’s Littauer Building, forcing some individuals to wait for hours on end.
“I know who has to sign my study card, but it’s kind of unclear who my advisor actually is,” says Katherine He ’10, an economics concentrator who reconsidered plans to pursue a graduate degree in economics partially because of “the lack of help that was present in the undergraduate economics department.”
In an effort to remedy this ambiguity, the economics department, which sees the largest number of concentrators in the College, is engaging in large-scale reforms of its advising programs, further centralizing its advising structure by eliminating three of the seven graduate student concentration advisers, replacing them with one dedicated staff concentration adviser.
This centralization breaks from the advising model for government, the College’s second largest concentration, which will introduce an undergraduate peer counseling system to bolster a wider sense of community.
Together, the revisions of the two advising systems will impact one in four Harvard students.
Both concentrations have suffered from poor advising in the past: A 2001 survey of Harvard seniors showed that economics and government concentrators rated the quality of their departmental advising at 2.57 and 2.62, respectively, compared to the college average of a 3.19 on a five-point scale.
In subsequent years, the two departments have undertaken reforms that reflect contrasting ideologies about advising.
The economics department seeks to centralize its program by employing fewer, but more specialized, advisers in Littauer. On the other hand, the government department hopes to disperse its advising resources to reach a wider range of students.
The newest changes in advising in these two departments reflect these differing philosophies—but questions remain as to whether either reform will be successful in improving students’ satisfaction with the guidance that they receive.
‘DO IT BY YOURSELF’
Three years ago, the economics department transitioned from using tutors in Harvard’s residential Houses as concentration advisers to employing a group of seven graduate students to advise students out of offices in Littauer.
According to Jeffrey A. Miron, the director of undergraduate studies in economics, the original system had presented a number of substantive issues for the department.
“Sometimes we could not find an adviser for every House,” he says. “Sometimes we had issues with quality control.”
But the reformed system of advising appears to have bred a sense of detachment between the department and concentrators.
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