Harvard Hum 10 applications up 40% as LLMs hailed as best-ever book discussion partners
NathanpmYoung · x · 2026-10-29
Applications for Harvard's classics course Hum 10 jumped 40% this fall, with 180 freshmen competing for 90 spots. The course demands a hefty book a week, regular essays, no digital devices, and attendance taken at every lecture — students actively want to be forced to read classics to combat frayed attention spans.
The quoted commentary makes a sharper point: for people who actually read, today's LLMs are better discussion partners about classics than any human — they have read everything and can simulate the richest intellectual environments. The problem is Harvard freshmen, trained on SparkNotes-style reading, only see LLMs as cheating tools rather than engines of deep textual engagement.
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