CAMBRIDGE — Before fall semester has begun, undergraduates at Harvard University were busy this month volunteering at a nearby homeless shelter, writing for the school newspaper, and working at a robotics startup.
Harvard is perhaps as famous for its many extracurricular activities as it is for academics. The Harvard Lampoon, Final Clubs, and Hasty Pudding Theatricals are extensions of campus life that have become part of the culture of Boston and beyond.
But the unusual amount of time students invest in extracurriculars on and off the Ivy League campus comes with a downside, and is perhaps one reason why Harvard finds itself in a crisis over academic freedom.
Harvard students are so overscheduled that they often don’t attend class, according to a group of professors tasked with probing the reasons for the university’s lack of so-called viewpoint diversity.
“You can’t have different views without learning,” Amanda Claybaugh, dean of undergraduate education, said this month during an interview in University Hall.
A report issued this year cited attendance and attentiveness as primary reasons why students tend to herd around trendy ideas and causes — more so than any type of pervasive liberal bias like that alleged by President Trump in his ongoing dispute with Harvard.
When students — no matter their ideology — aren’t present in class, the spectrum of ideas in discussions shrinks and fewer differing views are exchanged, the report found.
The classroom culture report, issued in January, analyzed surveys from professors, graduate students, and undergrads going back two years. Its authors set out to learn the extent to which students feel free to express their opinions on campus but quickly realized poor classroom attendance was the underlying issue.
“Many Harvard College students do not prioritize their courses and some view extensive extracurricular commitments as a more fulfilling, meaningful, and useful allocation of their time; most faculty view student curricular disengagement with alarm,” the report said.
At the school known as the Ivy with the most intense extracurricular grind, some Harvard students focus on pre-professional clubs because they’re chasing job offers. Semiprofessional athletes travel to competitions, and aspiring film directors skip class to shoot sitcom pilots.
There’s a saying on the Cambridge campus that everyone wants to found their own club so they can be its president, which is in line with Harvard’s reputation for developing national and world leaders.
“Students who aren’t coming to class as much are the people who are really career-oriented, to the extent that it sometimes takes a toll on their education,” said senior Anika Christensen, of Binghamton, N.Y. Her undergraduate period has included summer trips to Madagascar, where she researches diseases in collaboration with Germany’s famed Max Planck Institutes.
In years past, only seniors would skip class for job interviews. Now, professors said, sophomores and first years ask to be excused for internship interviews.
When students stay up late for extracurricular activities, they often skip morning classes the next day, professors said.
History professor Maya Jasanoff, the report’s lead author, was an undergrad at Harvard from 1992-1996 and joined as a faculty member in 2007.
“I detect, more than I used to, a greater sense among the undergraduates that, from day one, they have to be thinking about what’s next,” Jasanoff said.
Many groups, such as finance and consulting clubs, simulate real-world work experience, and alumni regularly recruit students for roles at their high-paying firms, said James McAffrey, a senior who plays trumpet in the Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra and writes for the Harvard Political Review. Last academic year, he cofounded the group Students for Freedom, which advocates against the university striking a deal with Trump.
“If they think the cost of skipping class today is less than the benefit of future opportunities, they think it’s worth it,” said McAffrey, who is from Oklahoma City.
Harvard’s undergrads weren’t always this obsessed with opportunities outside of school, Jasanoff said. The rise of startup culture, fueled in large part by Mark Zuckerberg’s creation of Facebook at Harvard, has been intensifying the campus pressure-cooker for more than 15 years, she said.
Consequences extend beyond the classroom, the report said. Students often don’t do assigned readings, and they seek out classes reputed to be particularly easy.
Students are also likely to skip large lectures, some of which are recorded and posted online. Most don’t have attendance policies. Those students are more likely to come to smaller discussion sections unprepared, current and former undergrads said.
In years past, Jasanoff said, she observed about a 15 percent drop in attendance between the beginning and end of the semester in her lecture on the history of the British Empire. Now, she said, “30 percent is completely expected.”
In humanities and social sciences classes especially, students need to form their own thoughts on course materials in order for educational dialogue to happen, said Claybaugh, who teaches English literature and history.
“We have to get them engaged with thinking before they will start to try on contrary ideas; the very first step is they should be in class for the magic to happen,” she said.
Politically, Harvard students come to campus from all kinds of backgrounds — representing diverse geographies and religions — and the average student is not leftist, said Tommy Barone, a former editor of the Harvard Crimson’s opinion section.
Students from very wealthy backgrounds are more likely to lean slightly conservative, said Christensen. They’re also among those intensely preparing to go into fields like finance and consulting after graduation, she said.
“Those tend to be the people who are a little bit more pro Elon Musk, as opposed to pre-med kids, or the people who are trying to go into more conventional careers,” said Christensen, who is double majoring in biology and music.
Claybaugh said that when students do come to class, most are on their laptops, some sending emails for their nonprofit, others applying to internships.
Multitasking in class, and anxiety around hot-button topics, can put the final stake in any hopes of exchanging differing political or moral viewpoints, Barone said.
When students aren’t attentive, they unintentionally or lazily repeat ideas their classmates said already, fueling a vicious cycle of non-discussion, according to Barone.
“You don’t pay attention because it doesn’t feel worth it, and because people aren’t paying attention, class is worthless,” said Barone, who graduated from Harvard in May. This spring he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship and hopes to go into law or journalism after studying American history at the University of Oxford.
In Harvard’s more politically charged classes on race, colonialism, or gender, students who have already researched the topic and settled on a strongly held opinion can end up steering discussion, according to professors and students.
The most well-versed students in the room become impatient with their less informed peers too easily, Jasanoff said. To avoid asking questions and rocking the boat on a politically charged topic, students who are more moderate in their views will “take cues” from their lefty peers, Barone said.
At its worst, students arriving to class unprepared converge on what they believe is the “right” opinion, which is often politically expedient, Claybaugh said.
This summer, Harvard graduate student teaching assistants participated in mandatory, university-wide training to gain tools for enforcing no-device policies and attendance requirements.
Barone independently devised similar rules for his Crimson op-ed writers during the 2023-2024 academic year, at the peak of the pro-Palestinian campus protest movement.
Laptops were banned and attendance was mandatory at Crimson columnist meetings. To enhance open, meaningful discussion on sensitive topics, members were discouraged from showing emotional facial expressions while their peers were sharing ideas.
“We encountered some really stern pushback for literally two weeks and then almost unanimously, people realized that our meetings had gotten dramatically more engaging, and people’s comments had gotten far less redundant,” he said.
Claire Thornton can be reached at claire.thornton@globe.com. Follow Claire on X @claire_thornto.