What could be better than Harvard?

[phantasmagoric]

<p>uddhavagita, you didn’t respond to any of my points, or present any evidence that supports your claim. You just reiterated your strange assertions.</p>

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that if Harvard wanted, it definitely could

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<p>Harvard does want to, and it can, and it’s trying, and it’s well on its way.</p>

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it’s not its goal to have a top engineering program like other schools have it.

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<p>Proof?</p>

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Harvard is not eager to go with the crowd. Take EdX, for instance

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<p>Funny juxtaposition there. I’ll point out that EdX was established long after such initiatives as Coursera, Udacity, SCPD, etc. at Stanford, not to mention the many other initiatives at other universities. Not eager to go with the crowd? Right.</p>

<p>Here’s something from a Crimson article on the newly established SEAS:</p>

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If approved by FAS, the new school will put Harvard on equal footing with institutions that house autonomous engineering schools and boast larger faculties.</p>

<p>“It will allow us to continue to attract the kind of faculty and students we want at a time when all major engineering schools in the country are expanding their programs" … the school’s full-time faculty will expand by approximately 30 positions—through joint appointments with other graduate schools and FAS positions—to bring the total faculty size to 100. By contrast, CalTech and Princeton have cultivated faculties of more than 100 professors, and cross-town competitor MIT has nearly 360 engineering faculty …

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<p>Sure as heck seems like Harvard’s bent on following the crowd and having a top engineering school.</p>

<p>And this article shows that your assertion about the endowment [edit: about everything] is just wishful thinking:</p>

<p>[Stretch</a> Marks | News | The Harvard Crimson](<a href=“http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2010/5/27/seas-school-faculty-graduate/]Stretch”>Stretch Marks | News | The Harvard Crimson)</p>

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Much of the engineering school’s future expansion will depend on the performance of the endowment—from which SEAS draws 45 percent of its yearly budget—as well as the school’s ability to find alternative sources of capital. Next year, SEAS will be facing the same 12 percent reduction in its endowment payout as other Harvard schools … “If [the endowment] super-tanks again, we’re not getting 30 more faculty for a very long time,” Murray says. … Despite these uncertainties in funding …

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<p>As I said, Harvard can’t just pull a top engineering school out of its … endowment. But it’s trying really, really hard to compete with the likes of MIT and Stanford, as that article demonstrates quite well. It also discusses exactly the same challenges I highlighted before, namely funding, facilities, faculty, and grad student support.</p>

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… to discover new ways to manage the growth while it operates within budget constraints and marshals finite research and lab space.
…
To maintain a six to one student to faculty ratio in SEAS, the school hopes to employ the necessary number of non-tenure track faculty members to serve as instructors … “If we have 200 new concentrators show up that weren’t there before,” Murray says, “we will add non-ladder faculty, including preceptors and lecturers.” [my note: certainly these non-professorial staff are not part of this new-and-improved brand of engineering that you say Harvard is espousing?]
…
In the face of expected expansion, another potential constraint confronting SEAS is the limited amount of laboratory space—a problem Murray acknowledged at her March All-Hands Meeting, saying that space at the school was “severely constrained.” … But finding the resources to construct the building will require additional fundraising by SEAS: “We don’t have the money to build it yet,” Habbal says. “But we are planning it.”
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In the face of increasing financial concerns and expansion in other areas of the school, the continued support for SEAS’ graduate program may be in jeopardy.
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Facing large-scale expansions in its undergraduate and faculty footprints, SEAS must look to surmount the challenge of continuing its expansion while it recognizes its financial constraints.

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<p>I promise, it’s really not that painful to admit that Harvard may not be the best at something, but still wants to be. No school is perfect - even Stanford falls behind Harvard in areas like public health; Berkeley in medical sciences; MIT in the humanities; Princeton in professional schools; and so on.</p>