The California Gold Rush — it brings to mind images of dusty travelers dragging themselves across the United States, abandoning families and livelihoods in other places on the slim but sensationalized hope that they would strike it big in the gold industry. Many of these people were so beaten down by the world that they considered this their only hope for salvation, and others were simply swept up in the fantastic narrative of it all. Regardless of their intentions, the gold industry did provide riches for some, but since abandoned towns are representative that this wealth was at best temporary and at worst an egregious waste of resources.
Harvard has long experienced a similar rush for riches from its students, but instead of 19th century prospectors looking for gold it is the recurring phenomenon of overwhelmed undergraduates desperately searching for “gems.” These classes, typically regarded as “easy” courses, have been colloquialized by the student body as “gems” due to both their scarcity and the value imparted on them by those who seek them. Every undergraduate is familiar with gems, with some of the most notorious being Greek Heroes and Sleep. While these are undoubtedly enthralling subjects, there is clearly another reason why their enrollment is often magnitudes higher than that of other general education courses.
It’s not shocking news that Harvard students are incredibly busy. On top of rigorous classes, most students engage in some combination of high-commitment extracurriculars, athletics, research, employment, and simple socialization if they are lucky. With all of these commitments, many of which take priority over classes, it should come as no surprise that Harvard students rationalize (as they do so well) to lighten their workload with an easy course whose virtue is testified to by so many.
Thanks to the honorable Q Guide, it is simple to take a closer look at just how much time Harvard classes really demand. Take this imaginary course schedule for a theoretical freshman: Multivariable Calculus, Introductory Spanish, Expository Writing, and Introduction to Probability. According to the Q Guide, the student in these courses spends a median of eight, five, six, and ten hours per week outside of class on coursework, respectively. With some simple math and allowance for variation, it is not unreasonable to conclude that most students can spend anywhere from 25 to 35 hours per week on classwork — not including the 10 to 15 hours they already spend actually sitting in class per week. In light of these numbers, a student choosing to take a gem, typically with medians in the three to four hour range for outside classwork, in order to prioritize classes fulfilling major requirements seems entirely sensible.
The prominence of gems could just be passively accepted as the widespread manifestation of a cost-benefit analysis that economics professor David Laibson could overlook with pride, but it should be considered with much more scrutiny. Perhaps the most recognizable concern associated with gems is that the quality of education within gems themselves is diminished due to massive enrollment. It is not uncommon to find students sleeping in the Sleep course, lost within the mass of undergraduates who commonly enrolled due to its reputation of being an easy A. Even with the concession that gems still often have sections — reducing class size and theoretically individualizing education and promoting discussion to some extent — it does not change the fact that most students who enroll in gems do not do so out of a sincere interest and are thereby not highly motivated to be large contributors. For the students who enroll in gems out of genuine interest in the subject matter, the established environment of indifference in these classes serves as a barrier to productive learning.
More concerning than the potential for students to come out of the class without having learned anything are the broader implications gem-chasing has on campus culture. Harvard’s commitment to an all-encompassing, world-changing education pervades all their rhetoric. Two prominent messages currently displayed on the Harvard College website are, “Harness your curiosity to learn about the world—and yourself” and “We seek to provide students with a deeply transformative experience.” But gems are inherently contradictory to these values, instead glorifying academic complacency if not laziness in the student body. It is concerning that it is commonplace for students to choose courses on the basis of a time commitment rather than content in the supposed “best” university in the world. The very integrity of a Harvard degree is called into question by this trend that suggests students really are just striving for a piece of paper at the end rather than academic growth and rigor along the way.
All this said, the blame for the prominence of gems should not be fully placed on students who have universally worked hard for admission to Harvard and continue to do so. Harvard students are still human, and overcommitment in classes and extracurriculars can have incredibly injurious mental and physical health effects. Nowhere in the world is a student body so invariably expected to be successful, and such expectations come with intense pressure. Feeling that none of their other commitments can reasonably be dropped, students turn instead to free up time from their class schedule.
Classes are the cornerstone of a Harvard education, but frankly the system needs to be reformed if Harvard wants to continue to live up to its reputation as an esteemed institution of learning. Gen Eds are requirements for the explicit purpose of allowing students room to explore subjects outside their declared concentrations. By their nature, they are unlikely to be immediately relevant to a student’s future career, rather serving to further Harvard’s mission of a liberal arts and sciences education that gives students a background in many different areas. However, students are more likely to take gems than explore genuine interests due to the pressure they face in other areas that take priority.
Given that the purpose is exploration rather than career preparation, Gen Eds taken to fulfill graduation requirements should be universally allowed to be taken pass-fail. Gen Ed enrollment should also be capped so as to prevent over-enrollment in traditionally labeled gems. These measures would both push students to take classes they are interested in as well as increase the quality of education within the classes while alleviating the academic pressure put on students.
Moreover, many (if not most) schools across the country allow students to vary how many credits they take each semester, permitting students to graduate in 9 or 10 semesters without it being regarded as unusual. This is incredibly rare at Harvard. If Harvard truly holds education as its highest priority, it should recognize that sometimes grades and time taken to graduate may not be indicative of true learning; they may instead hide an accumulation of desperate measures that students take to get through four years while still appearing successful on paper. If Harvard were to normalize taking more than four years to graduate, or taking fewer classes during the fall and spring and supplementing summer classes, the effort per class a student puts forth, and the benefit drawn from the class, would substantially increase.
Students only have one opportunity to be an undergraduate at Harvard. They only have one opportunity to learn from some of the most intelligent people in the world about some of the most relevant and pressing issues of our time. Gem-chasing is an unfortunate stain on an otherwise beautiful culture of collaboration and inspiration that the community collectively aims to develop. Requiring or normalizing pass-fail grading for Gen Eds, capping their enrollment, or giving students more flexibility in the time it takes to complete their degree could substantially increase the quality of education in each class and refocus Harvard’s true goals. Perhaps then this rush will finally strike true gold.
Image by Patrick Robert Doyle is licensed under the Unsplash License.
