President Conant describes the College's latest moves of promotion as a case of "running hard to stand still." The program of "running hard" involves sending officials and alumni into various schools where they contact possible applicants. A combination selling and information campaign follows in areas where Harvard feels it may have been cut off from its normal flow by the recruiting programs of rivals.
"Selling" a college, though, can become a performance approaching a Cecil B. DeMille extravaganza. In fact DeMille himself could probably take a few pointers from the annual "College Day" held at many large mid-western high schools. The schools, many of them no doubt irked at the unending parade of college admissions men, have in many cases had over 400 college officers assemble in the same place on one day to talk shop.
John Monro, who has been playing the Illinois circuit for Harvard during the past several years, says that "the travelling circus of admissions counselors descends on a high school like locusts." Monro explains that he takes a table, plunks down some pamphlets, hangs up a Harvard banner, sees a few harried students and parents, and then pulls up stakes for the next town's "College Day."
Monro feels that this type of selling and interviewing "doesn't do too much harm," but it isn't exactly his idea of how to conduct the program. He much prefers to deal with each school individually, and by virtue of his coming from the East, he usually does manage to conduct his business more calmly outside the arena.
Dean Bender does not want to see this high pressure selling get out of hand either. "We can certainly benefit from good salesmanship and the added evidence from interviews," he says, but the problem "must be approached with perspective and humility." Bender insists that any College of "real integrity" will inevitably be out of tune with some powerful currents in American life. As a result, "Harvard cannot hope to appeal to all the leaders of schools and expect to maintain this basic integrity."
One other problem which must be solved is whether to accept Western students while rejecting better qualified Eastern students. Educational standards might carelessly be sacrificed in order to gain better national distribution.
5. What About Athletes?
To many both inside and outside the Harvard family it may seem that the College and all its Ivy rivals have gone on gigantic athlete-purchasing sprees. Some skeptics maintain that Harvard is abandoning its traditional policy of having students play football in favor of having football players attend colleges.
No Harvard administrator will flatly deny that the college is conducting an intensive search for scholar-athletes; but at the same time, the College will point out that it is not at all changing its amateur athletic policy. A "Balanced College," administrator say, requires an intercollegiate athletic program.
Since, the war, however, rival Ivy League recruiting has unquestionably attracted many fine scholar-athletes who might normally have come to Cambridge. In striking back, Harvard may expect unpleasant consequences no matter what it does. Even then Crimson alumni try to convince a good scholar-athlete to come here, the boy will often construe such talk, as the same old bribery they have heard from Big Time recruitors, albeit done up in a dignified package. Some Harvard alumni may even have made empty, irresponsible promises, but Dean Bender feels that any "disillusioned" football players here today are more likely victims of the current national mania that seem to say a college owes the athelete something special.
"Respectable" sales programs are often mere facades for many colleges that pretend they are "selling" the college when they are really buying the player. Princeton however, and several other Ivy Leaguers seem to have made the program work so far without deliberately entering the professional circuit. Princeton seems intentionally to foster the reputation of being a place for the "all-around boy"--a reputation that automatically attracts a large number of student-athletes.
But the traditionally vociferous Nassau alumni also have a recruiting machine which, according to one Harvard official, "is simply beautiful to watch." Well-organized Schools and Scholarship Committees scour the nation for scholar-athletes, and when they get one they feel can meet Princeton's high standards, they apply continuous pressure. They seldom lose the boy to another college. Princeton encourages trips to Nassau's campus, shows athletic films around the country, and sends the affable Charley Caldwell on the chicken saled circuit.
Yale follows a similar program, but Bob Kupath takes his swimming team to a Massachusetts prep school for an exhibition meet, and Bob Hall takes Yale movies along when he drops in at Connecticut schoolboy team banquets. Recently Harvard has not felt itself above this sort of salesmanship. The number of coaches' tours is up and it is now quite common to join Yale and the others at the school boy banquets; and the New York Harvard Club this year brought 20 athletes to Cambridge to tour around the College.
Harvard salesmanship may be something new but the basic admissions policies are unchanged. The committee on Admissions still emphatically insists that every candidate meet College Board certificate grades, and the Faculty here still flunks football players. Many a former Yardling star has yet to set foot on Stadium turf.
Yet administrators also fervently trust that the breed of true scholar athletes is not yet extinct and that there are plenty of football players who can still want and deserve a Harvard education. But then again, it may be that the rest of the nation's colleges have already turned intercollegiate football into a permanent morass.
Officials are a little skeptical of just how useful interviews can be. Even experienced admissions office personnel cannot always learn much about a boy in half an hour. And Alumni are less competent. Some of them tend to give a poor rating to a shy, sensitive boy; others think every athlete is a tramp. These personal value judgments cannot help but be reflected in alumni interviewing reports but the feeling in the Admissions office is that some news is better than no news.
Until the past several years, only the Scholarship Committees have been doing much recruiting and interviewing. Set up as early as the twenties there are over 45 very active Scholarship Committees operating throughout the country. Many of these groups are giving out Harvard Club scholarships, and hence are particularly concerned about recipients full background. Von Stade, however, has already succeeded in getting the committees to interview men for Harvard College scholarships as well as for their own, a big help to both ron stade and the Admissions Committee.
Von Stade's immediate problem is to cut down the number of scholarships applicants; in 1950 46 percent of all admissions candidates applied for aid. So the hopes that the new Schools Committee with attract more paying guests to the college and take some of the burden off Harvard's tightening budget.
Of course, the practices in each Scholarship of Schools Committee vary enormously. Minneapolis