Darcy Burner’s Degree

My thoughts on this absurd Seattle Times hit on Darcy Burner:

Harvard, as you know, is old and fancy. Consequently, it has a lot of old and fancy terminology and procedures that differ somewhat from the American norm. They don’t, for example, have “teaching assistants” (TAs) instead they have “teaching fellows” (TFs). You don’t live in a “dorm” you live in a “house.” Instead of “RAs” there are “proctors” and “tutors.” And instead of “majors” there are “concentrations.” If I want to communicate some fact about my college experience in a normal way, however, I’ll say that “when I was in college I majored in philosophy, Walid Hussein TAed two of my classes, and my dorm was near Noch’s.” By the same token, there are no minors at Harvard. What Burner did is the Harvard equivalent of doing a joint degree in computer science and economics, though it’s not technically called that and the process (which would involve taking an adequate number of economics courses and then writing a thesis that bridges both subjects) is probably somewhat different from what you might find elsewhere. That she chose not to give a tediously detailed description of the academic procedures of her undergraduate institution is just common sense.