Well, the emails are working. The Seattle Times changed the headline from:
Darcy Burner's claims of a Harvard degree in economics aren't true
To:
Darcy Burner's Harvard econ degree an exaggeration
The Seattle Times also updated the story twice. Many of you have contacted the editor or Emily Heffter at eheffter@seattletimes.com and the emails I've seen have been polite and well-reasoned. Meanwhile, former Harvard faculty and students are posting about how stupid the article is.
Whoever wrote this story doesn't understand the Harvard system. I used to teach there. It's perfectly reasonable to say that Burner has a Harvard degree in computer science and economics.
Here's mediamaverick:
Hmmm....I teach journalism at the graduate level and actually earned a degree from Harvard. Your reporter should have been more careful with the facts. You may want to check out your own bio for Darcy Burner which cleary states here degree status (from Harvard). Earning what is essentially a joint degree is more difficult that a regular major.....You owe her a big apology for your misleading headline and half-baked reporting effort.
countrymouse
I was a freshman at Harvard when Ms. Bruner was a senior (never knew her). As other commenters have noted, if you wanted to double-major, you had to choose one 'home' department, and then you made arrangements to take upper-level classes in another department. CS and Ec would have had overlapping pre-requisites (Math, etc), so taking 5 upper-level Ec classes sounds about right for what she is claiming ("a degree in computer science and economics").
Did the reporter even give Burner the simple courtesy of a chance to answer the charge that she was lying before going to press? If not, maybe she needs to go back to journalism school. May I suggest a minor in journalistic ethics
Here's JK465:
As someone who has been on faculty at Harvard, I can attest that this is simply twisting words for political opportunism. Harvard doesn't have "majors". They only have concentrations. And they don't have "minors" -- so to gain other credentialed experience, someone gathers coursework in joint, or dual concentrations. However only one department can appear on any transcript. Period. Even if you had major coursework across three departments (say your joint major area was "Molecular Biochemistry", you would Biology, Chemistry and Molecular Biology courses) but you would have to designate ONLY one of those as the primary department and thus folks might think you had only biology OR chemistry OR molecular biology work.
Ms. Burner's description is accurate if you understand the Harvard system (which also until recently had a 14 pt GPA scale -- I don't hear folks calling Ms. Burner a 'liar' about any 12.76 GPA average that she likely had). You just need to understand the Harvard system and its terminology which is quite different from most University systems.
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