Knowing a bit about Harvard students from having been a grad student there, there are many who would give the Garden of Eden no more than a 3 on a 5 point scale. Which is not to deny that many faculty view students as an annoyance, but really, a class with 8 future pressidents, 4 future Nobel lauraeates and both the next Hemingway and Fitzgerald can be tedious.

To stop being snotty, these are kids who mostly have worked very very hard to get to Harvard and not unsurprisingly many of them feel special for it. And now they are at the place that is supposed to be the best, but it's far from perfect and I suspect the disillusionment is simply greater than at other schools. Who goes to MIT or Univ Chcago expecting a social life?

Dan:

Got "Real" (dis)Satisfaction?

Of Significance and Statistical Significance and Practical Significance--Hmmm...are the differences in Satisfaction measures that you report statistically significant??

If not, your reporting of the numbers may be somewhat misleading.

Go Figure??

Randy Piper, Ph.D.,M.B.A.

How DID they skate by those anti-trust charges? It seemed fairly clear-cut to me.

Cranky

Matt Yglesias had a funny post in this, to the effect that Harvard selects students who don't know how to have fun.

When I was an undergrad at Virginia Military Institute (in the pre-coed days)nobody even surveyed our (dis)satisfactions. At least Harvard has enough interest to gather statistics. The real test, however, is what the administration is going to do about it. By the way, do they break down the student reactions by faculty?

When I got to Chicago as an assistant professor, at one of the welcoming events Geof Stone talked a little about Chicago's rankings in the COFHE surveys of alumni. On questions like "What do think about the education you received?", Chicago was near the top. But on questions like "Would you send your children to the same school?", we were near the bottom. In other words, it's the best possible education, but still not worth the suffering.

I do think things have gotten a lot better, even just in the last ten years.

I recently filled out one of those Chicago alumni surveys and ranked Chicago high in both the categories that Sean lists.
Sadly, most students at Chicago become very depressed their first year because of what they think college is all about. One hears about things like ScavHunt, sees the crazy college movies coming out, and mentally jot down the anecdotes of siblings at Penn or Princeton. Life at Chicago is seriously different than that.
A first year at MIT does not need to worry about grades. Chicago and Harvard students do not have such a burden lifted. And as the Globe article points out, getting into Harvard is great the minute one receives the acceptance letter and the second one secures a prestigious job. The time served in between is not the cocaine-like intellectual stimulation of professors or the fun-filled shenanigans of Animal House that students expect.
Although I've never taken illegal substances, I became hooked on Chicago-style debate, and my experiences elsewhere have not quite compared. Perhaps this is why I sacrificed fun for "the life of the mind." Chicago made me an addict.

I went to Harvard and have taught at a good, though not quite top-tier, liberal arts college. There's no comparison. If you want a first-rate undergraduate experience, go to a place where that's the stock in trade, not to a research university where it's an often-neglected sideline.

Bottom line: Hyde Park is dull, dull, dull. At least Harvard's got the Square.

So long as U of C students have to take cabs to Lincoln Park to have a good time, mark the school down as a no-fun zone. Oh, and I don't think moving the Checkerboard changes much at all.

"..and that they don't have as much fun as peers on many other campuses."

Gosh, that's horrible.

On a 60 Minutes piece a few years ago, the report projected the idea that sometime in the future there will be a lawsuit over false advertising of the "prized faculty" that undergraduates (especially) never see.

Is Harvard leaving itself open for trouble?

One has to wonder just how many student have negociated a "better deal" based on this "dissatisfaction".