Wow. Like you I find this appallingly bad for the College.

(Notably, GSAS already has the opportunity to do this with undergraduate students, since FAS personnel have constant access to the College students for recruiting purposes, and House Tutors, mostly GSAS, are constantly held up as role models. Even that pre"profession"al slant in the College I deplore.)


This is a bad bad thing HBS is doing -- if I ran the world this sort of situation would be University Presidents' #1 priority. Can she mediate?

Well-aimed comments, Richard, and a fascinating topic.

Standing Eagle
 

I agree, Richard and SE. Terrible idea. One of the great strenghts of Harvard College is the absence of a Finance major. What is particularly offensive is the notion that HBS would get students thinking in such terms almost before they pick their concentration/major, when the College has just legislated postponement of declaring the major. This goes completely in the face of what a liberal arts education should be doing. Harry?
 

All three of you (Bradley, SE, Thomas) really need to learn to read the original source before posting comments:

http://www.hbs.edu/news/releases/091307_2plus2.html

Note, the program is for ALL college juniors, not just those at Harvard College. Will there be many applicants from the College? Yes. But keep in mind that there are only 90 seats in the program for everyone -- perhaps a dozen (or two) will go to Harvard College, where each class is 1650 students.

Second, should HBS really be designing its recruitment programs for college students based on the interests of Harvard College, as Thomas indicates? I think not. HBS should be looking out for its own interests, not the potential effects its programs -- designed for all college students -- might have on the undergraduates at Harvard.

Third, how does this create a "finance major," as Thomas suggests? There are NO courses involved -- it's not as though students at the College do ANYTHING with HBS other than have a seat reserved for them. Currently, the finance courses for College students are through MIT, not HBS. If you ask me, this is a case of a classics professor having a knee-jerk reaction to anything that even mentions the word "business."

Finally, please note that you apply to the HBS program at the end of your junior year. I am now starting my junior year here, and let me tell you that many of my classmates have already taken the MCAT and many will take the LSAT next June -- BEFORE when this application is due. The sessions for the Rhodes, Marshall, and Fulbright are held during May of junior year.

A deadline for the summer after junior year is NOT too early -- tell me, Thomas, how does "HBS get students thinking in such terms almost before they pick their concentration/major," when the application deadline is after three years at the college?

By your same measure, law and medical schools have been "getting students to think in such [pre-professional?] terms almost before they pick their concentration[s]" for years. Do you condemn HMS and HLS too?
 

"Do you condemn HMS and HLS too?"

Yes. --But only as participants in a wider cultural problem on college campuses. Nothing to be done except exhort students to have a liberal-arts experience.

I retract my comment on the HBS program in light of anonymous's correction. Richard, can you correct the error of summary on the front page?

Standing Eagle
 

Oh, and by the way, anonymous --

That's PROFESSOR Thomas to you.


SE
 

Thanks for the site, 12:25, and I retract what needs to be retracted on the basis of that, but not my view that it is a bad idea. If it is a good idea for HBS that does not make it a good idea, by the way.

There is a difference between taking various standardized tests such as GRE, MCAT etc. on the one hand and application deadlines on the other. There is also a difference between the existence of implicit or explicit prerequisites on the one hand and application deadlines on the other.

Why these early deadline? Acceptance to this program is communicated on Sept.15. In the Harvard system that is before course shopping even begins, before seniors meet with thesis advisers, and so on. We're not told how long students have before they have to accept, but the obvious question arises: why such an early deadline when the student won't be arriving at HBS for three years after acceptance?

Forcing career decisions earlier rather than later is in my view a bad idea, likely bad even for HBS.

Oh, and they call me MISTER Thomas.
 

Thanks to Mr. Thomas for engaging in the substance of the post.

I would concede that one the face of it, the deadline looks early. Why not push it back until November 1 and then give a decision by Christmas? That is what UChicago and Columbia law schools do for their early decision programs, after all. Still, I think there is a good reason for the September 15 decision.

The early deadline *likely* exists so that HBS can help the accepted students find suitable jobs, as they say in the press release; remember, e-recruiting for financial jobs is FIRST semester for seniors who are applying for full-time positions. Viewed in this context, the deadline does make sense. To move the deadline and the timing of the decision back, you would need to change the HR practices on all of Wall Street. And, even then, HBS could plausibly argue, "Honestly, so what if we give a decision four months early? Is that really going to cause students to change their career paths?"

To this last rhetorical question I posed on HBS' behalf, I would answer "no." Here's why: Most of the students who will be applying for the HBS program are investment banker types, virtually all of whom do internships during the summer after their junior years and very frequently receive full-time offers after the programs end. (A large portion even do similar internships between their sophomore and junior years.) In fact, for the past couple years, the investment bank Lehman Brothers has been sourcing 100 percent of its full-time analyst class out of its summer analyst pool. This move is being replicated by other banks, I believe, including Merril and Morgan (it could be other banks, but I know it's being replicated). The deadlines for these internships are January 31 through late March -- that is, before the HBS deadline. So students who currently want to go into finance *already* have to decide this well before HBS' proposed deadline. And, of course, the people who eventually do take analyst positions likely decided well before second semester of their junior years that they want to be bankers, traders, etc. (This is unverifiable -- I'm giving you my opinion of my classmates. Refute it if you have the knowledge.)

So, Mr. Thomas, my point is this: You cite a potential harm that students will be rushed into choosing a career path early. I don't think that's a realistic view. Because of the existing structure of the financial field -- and I would bet that 80-85 of the 90 students will be coming from finance or consulting -- students must already decide on finance well before the July 1 deadline, and HBS will likely cause nobody to make the hasty decision to become a financier.

I think I can predict your response: that's all fine and well, but the problem IS the HR practices of Wall Street. Students ARE likely going into banking without thinking it through. My response is simple: Then direct your fire at banks, not HBS and other business schools. HBS has to play inside of the world where it accepts students from and sends its alumni out into. If anything, it's Harvard College that could push back against Lehman Brothers' desire to have students decide on careers so early.

Finally, on SE's first post, I will simply point out that the GSAS is not "pre-professional." It's academic. I don't think there is anything wrong with a student who loves economics and wants to get a Ph.D. taking graduate-level economics courses. I do think there is something wrong with a College student taking a marketing course at HBS. This is a view that I think most FAS professors would agree with. And remember, there are many joint AB-AM or AB-SB programs in the science. Another popular one is economics and statistics.

Again, thanks for the substantive discussion.
 

Thanks for your response 6:26, though your points about early bank internships and the expectations they create about post-graduation employment essentially dominating so much time at college is simply more depressing. This sort of thing is inimical to the goals of a liberal education, which should teach you how to live your lives in ways that have meaning. I don't need to go through the litany of Enron, Tyco, etc. to suggest a broader education MIGHT help counter innate rapacity and greed.

For all I know you get a lot out of your general education, for instance, and I hope that is the case. However, courses that are not directly relevant to the career whose training is underway by the end of sophomore year will likely be treated accordingly by many students, and that is not encouraging.

Banks will do what what they do to make as much money as possible, and I suppose that is what they should do. Universities should not collaborate with them by accelerating the professional training of undergraduates. Here I would think Harvard, the entity to which HBS and the College both belong might have a point of view.

Anyway, thanks for entering this discussion, an important one, I think. The MISTER Thomas was actually a joke, but you're too young to get it.

http://www.blackfilm.com/20020304/features/a-sidneypoitier.shtml
 

That was me.
 

Richard, you are waking up from your slumber it seems...
 

The final score: Student 75, Professors (harumph, harumph) 0. It is amazing to see how little some professors know or understand about the world outside their cloister.
 

This is such an interesting and important thread, but it hasn't quite focused on one central issue, posed by 12:25:

"HBS should be looking out for its own interests ...."

Now let us remember that the stated big agenda of the past 6 or 7 years was to unify the university. To end the Harvard tradition of warring Faculties behaving like feudal states. To get the deans cooperating rather than competing. This was high on the Corporation's agenda when they appointed Summers, and it was high on Summers' agenda. If I am not mistaken, it has continued to be bruited about as an important agenda for Bok during his interim year, and for Faust coming in.

Some decisions have been taken over that time period that plainly serve that agenda. "Class credit" for College donors was extended to certain professional schools, to encourage wealthy College alums to give their money to the Ed and Div Schools. We have inter-Faculty departments, which have intellectual significance, but also restrain inter-Faculty bidding wars. Most recently, after long deliberation, the calendar was unified. We will all have our spring break at the same time now. Harvard is one.

Or is it?

Have any of the crossregistration policies of the Faculties changed as a result of the calendar change? Will students actually learn more because our spring breaks are synchronized?

Was there a conversation between HBS and the College about the wisdom or significance of this 2+2 program for 20 year olds? Will students be wiser and better educated because of this new early admission program (adopted just as the College got rid of its)?

I don't know. In the case of the 2+2 decision, though, I rather strongly suspect that HBS was looking out for itself, as 12:25 put it. It didn't care about the impact on the College or on the education of college students elsewhere. It didn't consider the developmental issues Richard Thomas raises. It was more likely thinking of its competitive position in the marketplace for business school students.

Even more significantly, HBS either didn't care about the educational consequences of its decision on Harvard undergraduates, or thought there was no expertise in the College worth consulting on that question anyway. I would love to know if there was any HBS-FAS discourse about this at all.

Perhaps one of the presidents at one point pulled together the deans or some other University-wide brain trust to think holistically about the educational significance of this decision.

But I suspect not. I think that 12:25 represents the actual university position, that university unity is mostly about fundraising, budgets, and calendars, and that no one is thinking about the educational consequences of major decisions, as I have intemperately been saying for several years. Now there is an agenda for the future of which Harvard could be proud.
 

Such a breath of fresh air to see Harry here, using words like 'educational' and 'developmental.' Hear, hear!

I wish I could believe that any business school could be persuaded that the quality of the American college experience was any of its concern.... I'm afraid persuasion and explanation wouldn't be the tools for even a powerful President in this exchange; the question would be What's the hammer?

Nonetheless, Harry again offers a compelling aspirational vision of the university as a shared enterprise, focused on the fostering of the best possible citizenry (world and US, public and private).


By the way, anonymous student -- although the term 'professional' is, by convention, not usually applied to the GSAS, that doesn't change the fact that a doctoral program is always in some way a vocational education. A PhD is not something to be undertaken without a vision of one's career that relates to it. (Your description of a doctorate as the aggregation of some courses one is interested in sounds much more like a college major, and not even necessarily like a Harvard concentration.) Careers in academia may be 'academic,' but they are careers -- even if the conservative worldview in our culture would have us all believe that any work or salary-earning at a university is pure sandbox stuff.

Trust me: 'professional'ization is not an optional part of a doctoral program. It should be VERY optional in the College -- and championing that principle is the biggest job of an advisor.

SE
 

"f anything, it's Harvard College that could push back against Lehman Brothers' desire to have students decide on careers so early."

An interesting idea!

Why not put that PR machine to actual educational use?
 

Well put, Harry, and it would be good to get some discussion going on this important matter. Slumbering in my cloister, RT
 

Has anyone asked the students what they want?
 

As I understand it, the HBS 2+2 gets student development right - by helping students defer big decisions and helping them explore opportuniies. Seniors in this program can do a wide range of things after college - like Teach for America - and a wide range of things after they get an MBA. In contrast, after four years, law school graduates are grinding out footnotes for briefs, medical students are far down a career path, and doctoral students in the humanities are burrowing away at some academic obscurity that pleases their thesis committee.

Also, why should HBS or anyone else consult FAS on educational or developmental issues when it has made such hash of its curricular review? FAS should get its house in order before issuing pronouncements to the world.
 

7:02 Amen!
 

Lehman Brothers, 'having sourced 100 percent of its full-time analyst class out of its summer analyst pool', is apparently also pushing new grads to sign up for Teach for America! Enough with the violins, 7:02
 

Couple comments here. My question is not so much whether early admission is good or bad. (And as for what students want---students sophisticated enough to make EA work for them love it, and most aren't that well-informed or well-advised.) The question is whether Harvard is EDUCATIONALLY going to be ETOB in the future as it has been in the past. Having HBS begin an early admission program just as the College ends its EA program makes you wonder whether anyone outside HBS even knew it was happening (the provost, one of the presidents, a friendly phone call between the deans of HBS and FAS or GSE maybe, etc.). If not, one has to wonder if all the "unifying" rhetoric is irrelevant to our main business, which is education.

To be sure, the FAS curricular review was a hash and gives FAS little credibility. That was the fault of the leadership. The review started badly and finished badly, with last September's report being the only bright spot. Not once in the endless amendment debates last spring did any member of the university leadership say that a proposal ran counter to the educational philosophy of the report, broke new educational ground, etc. Those at the round table recognized speakers and counted votes, period, rather than providing educational leadership. Which again points to the curious fact that the "unifying reforms" put forward over the past few years as so important have covered donation rules and synchronized spring breaks rather than education.

Wouldn't it have made sense for whoever was president when this 2+2 idea was floated to have gotten a couple of deans together to hammer out a consistent educational philosophy in the changes Harvard was making in admissions rules? The answer to that question is no, if we are going to remain educationally ETOB as 12:25 and 7:02 say. And yes, if we are to believe the rhetoric of unification.

I personally think ETOB works better (or works better when the tubs have good leadership). But real coordination would be exciting too (again, under good leadership). What I don't like is pretend-unity, and forgetting about the educational dimensions of administrative decisions.
 

Misgivings also at Harvard's Office of Career Services;

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=519505