Shots In The Dark

According to an internal Harvard memo reported by Marcella Bombardieri of the Boston Globe, Harvard students have such low levels of satisfaction with their college experience, Harvard ranks 27th out of a group of 31 elite universities, including the entire Ivy League.

Key quote: <<''Harvard students are less satisfied with their undergraduate educations than the students at almost all of the other COFHE schools," according to the memo, dated Oct. 2004 and marked ''confidential." ''Harvard student satisfaction compares even less favorably to satisfaction at our closest peer institutions.">>

That's basically a fancy way of saying that Harvard students don't like their university.

Or—forgive me while I toot my own horn—as I write in Harvard Rules, "A startling number of Harvard students will tell you that they don't like their school. They appreciate it. They respect it. They are thankful for the opportunities it provides them. But they don't like Harvard."

The question is why. I think it has something to do with the established culture of the institution: hurried, competitive, over-achieving, and individualistic. This is not a warm and nurturing place. It's not a fun place.

But it's not just the institution's fault. So many kids at Harvard have worked since kindergarten to get into the university, you'd sometimes think that they wouldn't know fun if it hit them on the head. They've put the university on such a pedestal, they don't realize that once you're there, it's all right sometimes just to play. College may be the last time in life when you can have fun without guilt...but at Harvard, some kids feel guilty whenever they're not doing the same things that helped them get in in the first place: over-achieving like mad.