At Harvard, a Watershed
The Task Force on Teaching and Career Development, led by GSAS dean Theda Skocpol, has released a landmark report on the quality of teaching at Harvard.
While praising the contributions of many professors, the report eloquently describes an academic culture in which teaching is not rewarded, but is de-valued and de-emphasized. Again and again graduate students and junior professors get the message that, if they want to get ahead at Harvard, they should blow off the teaching and focus on research.
(This is reflective of a larger issue at Harvard, where individual success is generally valued more than contributions to the larger community.)
Skocpol's committee delineates this phenomenon with uncomfortable specificity. As best I can tell on a quick skim of the 86-page document, it does not go into issues in particular departments—hello, economics?—but the anonymous quotes it includes from people who try to teach well yet are discouraged from it are pretty damning.
The report has a number of recommendations, but the one that will really rock the Harvard world suggests linking pay to teaching performance. That is a watershed at Harvard, a truly fundamental shift in the way that teaching is valued at the university.
It will be interesting to see how the faculty reacts to it.
A final note: This task force began its work in September '06, a few months into the Bok interregnum. Those undergraduates who aren't sure what Derek Bok has been up to should take note. Those who revered Summers because he came to pizza feeds and signed dollar bills might consider the fact that there is no inherent reason why such a report could not have been issued during the five years of the Summers' presidency...
