Lowell Reforms

President Lowell 30-add years ago ushered in the general study program which undergraduates have come to expect today-separate fields of concentration, divisional examinations, and the like. With this came a revival and vast extension of tutorial. Tutoring was now a function that any faculty member performed, not merely the title for the lowest form of instructor. During the '30s, 95 percent of the College received tutorial.

Then, as now, skeptics insisted that the disadvantages of universal tutoring would outweigh the benefits. Morison again comments:

"Most students and alumni were against it, partly as a new burden, partly because it seemed a retrograde step from the free election of the Eliot era. (However, it was eventually alumni generosity that covered the large initial expenses.) Not many members of the faculty cared to undertake tutorial instruction, and new men had to pick up tutorial technique as best they could. . . . Gradually the personnel has improved, and, especially since the Houses have been built, a close personal and friendly relation between tutor and 'tutee' has been established. . . . The most surprising improvement has been the increasing number of undergraduates who undertake additional study in order to obtain honors at graduation."

Lowell Guessed Wrong

President Lowell confidently expected that the new tutorial son would become the core of all upperclass studies, and that the wide assortment of courses would diminish to a few large basic introductory ones. Here he was wrong. Departments still encouraged their new men by allowing them to add new courses in their particular specialties.

By 1945, the Committee on General Education was forced to announce that "the time has come for Harvard College to recognize the impossibility of carrying both an extraordinarily rich system of course instruction and a tutorial system under which every student is given the benefit of individual instruction."

The Overseers had reached the same conclusion 11 years earlier:

"At present it costs just as much by the hour to tutor the unresponsive students, as the responsive, and the drain on the tutor's energy is greater in one case than in the other. Since these are times when every expense must justify itself, common sense would suggest that tutoring should be in large measure reserved for those students who can really profit by it."

In 1946, tutorial was limited to honors candidates. But the General Education Report had made it clear that non-honors men not receiving tutorial, should at least be counselled by a thorough advising system. This never happened.

Bender, Brinton Plans

This year there major proposals have been offered--all designed to close the breach between faculty members and non-honors men. All were set up for operation within available resources (although opinion differed as to the extent of these): and all concern the five largest departments--History, Government, Economics, English, and Social Relations--where mass production education is most noticeable.

The Bender Report proposed solving the problem by giving bi-weekly group tutorial to all undergraduates. The Bender Committee felt that these groups, to be successful could not exceed five men. To keep costs within reason, individual tutorial would be eliminated except for a handful of honors seniors.

Departmental reaction to this portion of the Bender Report was immediate and, adverse. An unofficial committee headed by History Department Chairman C. Crane Brinton '19, countered that individual senior honors tutorial rated top priority. If anything should go, they felt, it should be the five man limitation on the groups. The Brinton proposals suggested that eight to twelve man seminars would fulfill the needs of all but honors seniors.

Student Council Reacts