Harvard’s Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences has seen its enrollment increase dramatically since it became its own school in 2007. Harry Lewis, its interim dean, explains what’s driving demand:
The easy answer is we’re doing a superb job of teaching our courses and we’ve created an infectious enthusiasm among undergraduates. And I think that’s all partly true — CS 50 [the introduction to computer science] is a cultural phenomenon at Harvard now, in a way that never used to be the case. People take CS 50 because their buddy on the lacrosse team is taking the course. Everybody knows it’s a cool course, so everybody wants to take it. The same thing is happening to a lesser degree in some of the other engineering disciplines.
There’s also been a kind of cultural change at Harvard, where making things, doing useful things, is no longer — as it certainly once was at Harvard — considered the sort of thing gentlemen and gentlewomen didn’t do. Harvard used to be a place where pure science was revered and applied science was not particularly respected. And that’s very much not the case now.
I’m sorry, gentlewomen? Really?
Same in the US senate. It’s “The gentlelady from Maine” and not just lady.