Amid and after the campus upheavals of 2023-2024, her first year as dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), Hopi Hoekstra put in place advisory groups to examine everything from the conduct of the faculty’s meetings to the uses of artificial intelligence. Perhaps the most important focused on such academic fundamentals as promoting civil discourse, fostering robust classroom conversations, and better administering discipline when necessary. The latter two bore fruit during the spring semester, along with actions to tighten some grading (a continuing faculty concern). At the same time, FAS underscored its basic educational commitments by enhancing undergraduate financial aid amid a deteriorating outlook driven by harsh directives from the nation’s capital (see “In the Crosshairs,” this issue). Herewith the highlights.
• The classroom “compact.” In its report to the faculty on February 4, the Classroom Social Compact Committee (CSCC), chaired by Coolidge professor of history Maya Jasanoff and Goldman professor of economics David Laibson, acknowledged pressures on teaching and learning in the current political context. But Jasanoff said that many challenges to free speech, discourse, and intellectual vitality “really nest within a much larger set of issues faculty and students have been discussing for many years,” including the effects of ubiquitous access to much of the world’s intellectual capital through digital devices and the pressures students feel “to succeed in the postgraduate world.” Accepting the report as “a nuanced and comprehensive portrait of where we are today,” Hoekstra said it includes “some hard truths about our learning culture”: issues demanding broader solutions.
Hoekstra had asked the committee to develop guidance for students and instructors on how best to “increase the likelihood that a broad range of perspectives will be heard and that participants will open themselves to new ideas” in their courses. Another desideratum was ensuring that “everyone in the classroom…has a shared understanding of how they together contribute to an environment that promotes discovery, learning, and meaningful dialogue.” The ultimate aim was articulating in “simple, clear terms our community’s shared goals for the FAS classroom” and shared means to foster them.
The report provides some evidence that the Harvard academic enterprise is doing at least okay. Measured by mean scores of survey responses, students in this decade are more likely to report “I feel comfortable asking clarifying questions during class when I am having difficulty following the material being taught” than any undergraduates since the 1950s: the decade before Vietnam, the civil rights movement, and other upheavals. Related questions yield all-time high scores for beliefs “I feel my contributions to class discussions are valued by the teaching staff” and “I feel my contributions to class discussions are valued by other students in the class.”
But some of the ills that afflict the larger society resonate on campus, too. Mean scores show a relentless decline in responses to statements such as “In the courses I have taken, most other students listen and participate with an open mind and a willingness to change their point of view as they learn more about the topic.” The scores for 2020-2023 show fewer students concur that “The courses I have taken incorporate diverse perspectives and allow for exploration of different viewpoints” than in the prior two decades. Unsurprisingly, self-reported conservatives (a minority on this and similar campuses at selective universities) report feeling more inhibited in community discourse. Among faculty members surveyed in the summer of 2024 who expressed reservations about teaching or researching controversial issues, the leading concern was “unwanted attention outside the University, such as on social media or in the press.”
The committee proposed language for the student and faculty handbooks reemphasizing some basic principles. For one, “The classroom forms the center of a Harvard College education, and students are expected to prioritize their coursework.” For another, “Academic excellence requires students to participate in a thoughtful, candid, and free exchange of ideas....Students should approach learning with curiosity, intellectual openness, respect for new ideas and for other people’s perspectives” and should “expect regularly to encounter evidence, analysis, interpretations, and opinions that challenge their point of view.” Underscoring the point, grading “will not be affected by their political or ethical point of view.” Finally, to encourage open class discussion, “no member of a course—instructors or students—should post on social media (or share information that enables others to post) identifiable student classroom statements without written consent”—the Chatham House Rule.
Those aspirations resonated: after a model, robust debate on February 4, the handbook language was adopted during the March 4 faculty meeting, in a clear endorsement of the centrality of sound academics to students’ and professors’ interactions. Read a full report at harvardmag.com/harvard-classroom-25.
• Grading. Among the classes faculty members want students to take more seriously are required ones, including the four General Education courses—another subject discussed on March 4. During the past five years, the proportion of students opting to take one of the courses pass/fail has nearly doubled, to 11 percent, according to the Standing Committee on General Education—far higher than for other courses.
The rationale for permitting a pass/fail option for one Gen Ed course was to encourage students to explore intellectually. But the committee has concluded that “has not actually resulted in students exploring new academic areas in which they might feel less confident” and has instead diminished the learning experience for others enrolled. Faculty members who teach the courses (meant to be flagships of the curriculum and to broaden the College experience) “have voiced concerns about both absenteeism and disengagement in post-semester reflections,” and some students echoed these concerns in their course evaluations.
The committee recommended eliminating the pass/fail option—all four courses taken to fulfill the Gen Ed requirement would have to be letter-graded—beginning with the class of 2029. (Anyone taking such a course out of curiosity, not to fulfill the requirement, could still seek permission to enroll pass/fail.) A companion measure would make the required Quantitative Reasoning with Data course letter-graded, too. Both proposals were enacted at the April 1 faculty meeting, but only after tense and searching debate about the Trump administration’s actions against Harvard and the University response (see harvardmag.com/faculty-trump-higher-education-25).
• Augmenting aid. On March 17, shortly before applicants learned whether they had gained admission to the College class of 2029, Harvard announced a restructured and augmented financial aid program. It features three tiers of assistance and applies to all students next academic year:
Those whose family income is $100,000 and below will attend Harvard College free of charge (up from the prior $85,000 threshold).
Students whose family income is $200,000 and below will be granted “free tuition plus”: financial aid will cover the cost of tuition ($59,320 of the 2025-2026 term bill) and they will be evaluated individually for further aid to cover room, board, and fees. (The total bill next year is $86,926, up a sharp 4.9 percent from 2024-2025.)
For students whose family income exceeds $200,000, “tailored financial aid” will be extended depending on Harvard’s evaluation of individual circumstances.
Under the current program, families with annual incomes between $85,000 and $150,000 contribute between 0 and 10 percent of their income; those with incomes above $150,000 are asked to pay proportionately more than 10 percent based on their circumstances. The new program boosts aid for the middle tier of families and simplifies the terms of scholarship support, making Harvard’s aid competitive with peer schools’ offerings, which have been enhanced and simplified in recent years.
• Tightened belts. The enhanced aid is a notable statement of commitment to Harvard’s core educational purpose because it comes against the backdrop of worsening financial news for the institution and for FAS. Hoekstra warned at the March 4 faculty meeting, “We need to prepare for significant financial challenges.” Six days later, President Alan M. Garber notified the community of “a temporary pause on staff and faculty hiring.” Hoekstra upped the ante the next day, announcing that graduate students on the waitlist for admission next fall would be denied admission—a decision likely to shrink the entering cohort, once those offered a place at Harvard decide whether to enroll. These decisions reflect the state of play in Washington, D.C., and the fact that endowment distributions (more than half of FAS’s operating revenue) are growing more slowly, given past investment returns.
During a conversation on March 13, Hoekstra displayed preternatural calm about the unexpected demands “to meet the moment” during her deanship. That morning, she dispatched a “dear colleague” missive outlining principles for building “financial capacity and resiliency” beyond the steps already unveiled. But tough work lies ahead, guided by the financial model FAS adopted during the pandemic. Hoekstra was clear that FAS’s structural deficit and the changed “external circumstances” mean that cracks in the financial foundations, like the academic issues the faculty has taken on this year, are now pressing, too. Addressing them “has become more urgent,” she said. FAS “can’t be a place that is all things to everybody,” so the faculty faces “hard truths and hard choices.”
Those choices will only get harder as it decides whether to proceed on looming large capital projects, like Eliot House renewal; absorbs the costs resulting from Harvard’s multiple union contract negotiations; and adapts to any further shocks emanating from the nation’s capital. Come what may, FAS signaled that one bedrock point of departure is the importance of maintaining financial aid sufficient to attract and support the superb students, at all levels, whom Harvard continues to educate. Read more on financial aid and Hoekstra’s perspectives at harvardmag.com/financial-aid-25.
