Big Courses and the Problem of Parallel Universes

(Added: Those who are unaware of the cheating allegations at Harvard could read this quick summary from Bloomberg. It isn't the most complete--the Globe and the NYT have reporting that is fuller, but behind a paywall.) Though I have weighed in on other blogs with some reactive comments about the Harvard cheating issue, I have been reluctant to go on the air or to launch an offensive since my knowledge of the course is limited. I have read some but not all of the news stories, and have talked to a student in the course. The professor's reputation is at stake, as well as the students' integrity, so I want to be careful about seeming to attack or defend either on the basis of inference or speculation. Still, a few structural and institutional things seem to be clear. The course seems to have sent some mixed signals about the exam, with a TF holding office hours during the exam, in which students could hear each other's questions about their proposed answers, and the TF's responses. Of course, the exam instructions were clear: No collaboration. But 60mph speed limit signs also could not be clearer. If you go 63 for an hour and people are passing you, and then you pass a speed trap and see that somebody who raced passed you at 75 has been pulled over, you get used to the idea that maybe you, everyone else, and the police all agree that 60mph signs don't literally mean what they say. It sounds to me like some students were going 75--they were cutting and pasting--and some of the other students who have been pulled in were going 63. Hopefully the Ad Board will respond in proportion, though I think those 63mph students have some justification for rolling their eyes about their culpability. Those who keep insisting that the students should be punished because the exam instructions were clear will, I trust, not complain if they are ticketed for driving 63, like everyone else,  in a 60mph zone. Another thread (represented in a Globe editorial today, and an op-ed yesterday) suggests that if there is an institutional failure that contributed to the culture, it's that the course was too large. Again acknowledging that I know nothing in particular about this course or its professor, I think it's important to parse that a little bit--it has a germ of truth but it's not quite right. There are great courses that are large, and there are awful courses that are small. First, why is a course large? If the course is large because the professor announces at the beginning that it is going to be a gut, there should really be no surprise that the students don't take it seriously, but the size itself is not the problem. It's that students put out in proportion to what is expected of them, and a professor who says that his course is a gut has announced that he doesn't expect much of his students. Of course they may misunderstand each other about what exactly that means, but the professor surely intends to signal SOMETHING if he says that. A course can be large because it's a good course about an interesting subject. (Harvard's intro CS course is like that.) For certain courses, such as introductory economics, it doesn't matter that much whether it is a great course or not--the importance of the material will create demand, if it is the only intro to the field. A course can also be big because the professor is famous. I'll bet Niall Ferguson draws crowds, even beyond what the high quality of his lecturing would produce. Big courses, whatever the reason they are big, create management challenges. There are grading equity issues. There are problems with having adequate TF staffing, especially if enrollment is unexpectedly large. And there is the problem that the guy in charge of the course may have no idea what is happening on the ground, among the students. That can't happen in a seminar, and is unlikely to happen in a lecture course of 20. It can happen very easily in a big lecture course with a lead instructor who is a celebrity or is very busy with other things, and has left the management of the course to his staff. It is hard to talk about this without naming names, and again I would stress that I don't know the first thing about Niall Ferguson and the way he runs his courses. But you have to wonder about a professor, affiliated with both Harvard and Oxford, who brings up a page beginning with the following Google results when you append "speakers bureau" to his name. (Only one of these lists a fee: $40,001 and up.) I don't imagine that the professor involved in the current case is operating at that level. But isn't he taking his cues about personal and institutional values, as he works his way up the tenure ladder, from observing the behavior of his more celebrated peers? One of the unhealthy divi