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The problems with Harvard’s academic culture go far deeper than grades.
Two weeks ago, Dean of Undergraduate Education Amanda Claybaugh released a controversial report that proposed changing grading standards to “return the academic culture of the College to what it was in the recent past.”
Although this goal is admirable, the primary changes suggested in the report — awarding limited A+’s, recording median course grades on transcripts, and implementing a variance-based grading system — treat the symptoms rather than the underlying illness. Regardless of grading, students, especially in the humanities, are often not motivated to prioritize academics in their lives.
We agree with Dean Claybaugh that many, though certainly not all, students do not take their classes seriously enough. In our experience as humanities concentrators, we have found that the typical structure of courses allows some students to concentrate effort during the week before their papers are due — often only two or three times per term — and coast along unengaged for the rest of the semester. Even in sections, it is easy to contribute the bare minimum without having done the readings.
If A’s — or soon A+’s — are harder to come by, students will not suddenly reemerge with a newfound love for their studies. Undergrads will probably spend another two hours in Widener Library for the occasional paper, but the tendency to skip readings and sit in the back of a lecture hall unnoticed, scrolling through LinkedIn, will remain.
The truth is that there are numerous underlying structural issues in humanities departments that lead to a lack of attention and enthusiasm for course material. Large lecture courses are a leading offender, and their refinement provides a better starting point for working towards meaningful engagement.
In many of our lecture classes, professors merely summarize assigned readings, apparently assuming that students have not even looked at the texts beforehand. This puts students who have actually done the work in a state of déjà vu, while the remaining students discover that actually doing the readings is redundant.
Further, many humanities courses require few to no prerequisites. It can be difficult to discern from a syllabus or course number the rigor and conceptual difficulty of that class. As a result, courses at ostensibly higher levels end up catering to students from a wide variety of backgrounds and, in the process, spend precious time teaching basic skills like paper writing to a classroom full of students for whom that material is not new.
To be clear, these issues are not ubiquitous across humanities departments. We have both taken numerous classes with deeply engaging lecturers, challenging content, and high expectations — and we have come out the other side much better for it. Those experiences are the very reason we want transformative humanities teaching to be universal.
There are a few steps every professor could take to provide that experience to their students.
For one, lecturers must expect completion of reading and move beyond mere summarizing. Integrating connections to other works and engaging alternative views or historical context are all key to effective lectures.
Second, lecturers should embrace the cold-call in class — not as a “gotcha” moment or evaluative strategy, but rather to encourage attention and bring as many perspectives into the discussion as possible. No-laptop policies, which seem to be gaining traction at the College, are another step in the right direction.
A clearer path of progression through an undergraduate’s four years would also make choosing a humanities concentration more intellectually rewarding. There should be clear prerequisites to take upper-level courses, and there should be more rigorous requirements for classes further along in the progression. Entry level and skill building courses are a necessity, but students should be able to test out of such requirements if they show sufficient mastery of the content.
Finally, humanities departments should look to expand methods of evaluation beyond out-of-class essays. These assignments are an essential part of any humanities course, but the rise of AI opens the door for hard-to-detect corner cutting, while the infrequency of longer essays allows for occasional bursts of engagement.
One-on-one oral examinations in the spirit of Oxford University’s tutorials could help students refine skills — like reconstructing arguments — and demonstrate mastery of key concepts. Periodic in-class essays could also give students a chance to display familiarity with content without internet — and artificial intelligence — access.
The humanities are serious disciplines — it’s time for academic programming at Harvard to treat them as such.
Adam N. Chiocco ’27, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a Philosophy concentrator in Pforzheimer House. Theo W. Tobel ’27, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a Philosophy and Neuroscience concentrator in Dunster House.
