Excellence without a Soul: How a Great University Forgot Education (review)

Drawing from historical documents and more than 40 years of personal experience with Harvard, Harry R. Lewis, the former Dean of Harvard College, illustrates with bold honesty how Harvard College has lost its educational mission. Although the arguments and facts presented describe Harvard College only from Lewis's subjective viewpoint, many of the issues and dilemmas discussed could be extended to the other Ivy League colleges and, in many cases, to all top-tier research universities.

In Chapters 1 and 2, Lewis builds a strong case against the current curriculum in Harvard College. Lewis describes how the general education curriculum was originally designed to educate responsible human beings and citizens, yet has now evolved to a virtual "cafeteria model," offering a diverse menu of disjointed options completely lacking any intellectual integrity. According to Lewis, this model provides faculty with the freedom to teach what they want but avoids the difficult task of deciding what courses should be part of a curriculum that educates students in the liberal education tradition. Lewis laments that this model suggests that character and morality are not the College's business whatsoever.

In Chapter 3, Lewis focuses on the downside of the pursuit of excellence. The students' quest for excellence forces them into competition and isolation. Thus, Lowell in the early 1900s founded the Houses as an educational strategy to create democratic living communities of students and tutors from different backgrounds. Today, Lewis argues, Harvard's residential life has drifted away from any educational purpose and is built to please students whose primary interest is comfort.

Lewis provides various examples illustrating how student-faculty relationships have deteriorated significantly, due to cultural clashes and different pursuits in life between these two groups. For example, in the past students had close contact with devoted instructors; today, student-faculty contact in Harvard is well below national averages, and the process to evaluate teaching is far less rigorous than that used to assess research.

Lewis goes deeper into these group differences by discussing the enigma of advising in Chapter 4. In his view, the most important job of the advisor is to help students grow into responsible adults. However, Lewis argues, academics are not any wiser in their personal lives than the average population and, thus, are limited in their ability to properly advise students.

In Chapters 5 and 6, Lewis presents an interesting discussion about historical grading practices and develops persuasive arguments explaining grade inflation in Harvard throughout the 20th century. In his view, the causes of grade inflation are pressure from students, students' evaluations and tenure decisions, students' better performance, more small courses, better teaching, and too many grade categories.

Lewis eloquently discusses the purposes and methods of grading and argues that grades should not be used to encourage excellence, because course selection then becomes a game of strategy and score maximization. As a result, it doesn't motivate students who have had fewer opportunities to be well-prepared, and GPA only recognizes consistency over brilliance. Moreover, Lewis argues that it is not necessary to use grades as an educational tool because, if the instructors make their courses interesting, students will be motivated to excel regardless of the grade.

In Chapter 7 Lewis discusses the historic decay of moral education in Harvard. According to Lewis, moral education today conflicts with the imperative to please students and parents. In his discussion, Lewis narrates how "helicopter parents" want their children to be flawless and get the desired credentials. As a result, students are not gaining the independence, resilience, and sense of responsibility they need as young adults. The author illustrates these arguments by narrating how Harvard has handled rape cases based on the presumption that women have no responsibility at all for what happens during sexual encounters.

In Chapter 8 Lewis explains how, in the absence of a clear educational mission, money is now the driving force of decisions, which has allowed the university's...