At Wikipedia, factual errors are reportedly in decline, but sly omissions and white lies are on the rise. So Virgil Griffith, a Caltech grad student, developed the Wikipedia Scanner, which traces edits to the computers of a host organization. We at ~02138~ couldn’t resist a little wiki-scanning of our own: What follows is from recent incarnations of the “Harvard University” entry. Text removed by someone using a Harvard computer is in red; text added by someone using a Harvard computer is in blue.* Wiki-scanning by Lindsay Branch

Admissions

According to “The Atlantic Monthly,” it is the fifth most selective college in the United States (after MIT, Princeton, Caltech, and Yale).

A review of the SAT scores of entering students at Harvard over the past two decades shows that the rise in GPAs has been matched by a virtually linear rise in both verbal and math SAT scores of entering students … suggesting that the quality of the student body and its motivation have also increased.

Harvard’s current admissions policies, like those of other Ivy League institutions, originated in the 1920s, when the school sought to limit the number of Jewish students. Harvard officials worried that admissions based purely on academic promise and intelligence would result in a large proportion of Jews in the student body, which in turn would degrade the school’s social standing.

Undergraduate recreational activities

Moreover, it has been pointed out that Harvard’s rate of marijuana use is exceptionally low, at 28.7%, compared to the national average of about 60%.

The Harvard Crimson Magazine leveled a number of criticisms against the quality of the Harvard undergraduate experience, including widespread student dissatisfaction, exhaustion of the students, complacency of the administration, inattentiveness of professors, problems with the residential housing system, lack of campus community, and the dearth of on-campus social options … In fairness, the Harvard Crimson also has published articles that detail why those very issues are actually overblown.

Criticism

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, The New York Times, and some students have criticized Harvard … for its reliance on teaching assistants in undergraduate education, as many in the faculty are engaged in research (assistant teaching is not taken into account by the major college and university rankings); they consider this to be detrimental to the quality of education.

Harvard is the target of a number of criticisms, some of them leveled at other research-based American universities. It has been accused of grade inflation: nearly half of the grades Harvard issued in the year 2000 were A’s or A-minuses.

However, because Harvard has such a hold on the public consciousness in terms of its prestige, the media enjoys focusing on Harvard over other colleges who share similar problems.

Controversy

There has been considerable controversy of the handling of the Afro-American studies program … resulting in the departure of Cornel West to Princeton.

Harvard contains many world-famous departments, ranked as the top in their respective fields. For example, the Department of African and African-American Studies …