In the last decade, tutoring at Harvard, once a big, flourishing industry, has become a small, quiet monopoly.

From a small office on the top floor of Holyoke House, the Bureau of Study Counsel--with Administrative sanction and aid--virtually controls the tutoring business here. Nearly 1,300 students, 25 percent of the College, seek some sort of academic aid from the Bureau each year. Some 600 men use the "Remedial Reading Class," designed to increase efficiency in reading; three or four hundred use the counseling service, which helps the student solve problems in studying techniques; another three or four hundred use the tutoring service.

The percentage of students who use direct tutoring is small. The Bureau conducts this phase of its services in a quiet, efficient manner, and has capably handled, what was once a very disturbing thorn in the side of University Hall.

For two decades ago, tutoring at Harvard was a Big Business: a noisy, commercial, highly competitive industry that threatened to destroy the meaning of a Harvard diploma.

Originated in 1886 by William Whiting ("The Widow") Nolen '84, the tutoring business grew up rapidly. In the early 1930's, half a dozen cram bureaus vied for the Harvard trade from their quarters in the Square, dishing out a New Deal in educational methods. The genteel monopoly established by the Widow was transformed into a sharply competitive business whose practices were often quite unethical. A number of devices were used: ghost-writing papers, spotting or stealing exam questions, recommending "gut" courses, bribing monitors for class lists, hijacking lecture notes, and summarizing texts in violation of copyright laws.

The practice of extensive advertising also developed. In an article in the December, 1940, issue of the American Mercury, Irving Burton claimed that one school made an annual outlay of $10,000 for publicity purposes alone.

Wolff's Tutors advertised: "Diploma by Harvard--Tutoring by Wolff." The College Tutoring Bureaus claimed that it "has helped hundreds of Harvard students get better grades in their courses. We are now ready to serve you with our Notes, Outlines, and Liberal Translations." University Tutors made a different sort of appeal: "Midnight oil; loathesome toil." Another group advertised that "tutoring ....is not a crutch for the lasy or unintelligent bay, but a constructive educational technique."

Another practice in this decade of liberal education was the unique "Pay as You Pass" system, introduced by University Tutors. Although a "Gentleman's C" was practically guaranteed, the tutee paid on a sliding scale, with prices increasing as the grade improved.

In 1886, The Widow Nolan, a summa graduate, opened Manter Hall. Until his death in 1923, he maintained a quiet, unobjectionable tutoring business. His name and work developed into something of a legend, and it was not long before his successors at Manter Hall could advertise: "Ask Dad, ask Grand-Dad, about the Widow's."

Eventually the business grew to unnatural proportions, and late in the '30's the several schools grossed a combined profit of close to one quarter of a million dollars. Almost three-fourths of the College used the bureaus to some extent, and while the average expenditure of the student was small, some men spent over $300 a year, a few up to $1,000.

Verbal Stand

During the era in which the cram parlors flourished, the University took a strong verbal stand against them, but backed it up with little direct action. University Hall issued feeble protests and assumed a general air of helplessness and indifference for some time, while the "academic hijackers" were eating away at the vitals of the educational system.

It was left to four publishing firms to take the first step in crushing the schools. In 1933, Macmillan, Houghton Mifflin, Harper Brothers, and Ginn and Company sued the College Tutoring Bureau for abridging, printing, and selling copies of their textbooks. The Federal District Court awarded damages to the publishers, and issued a injunction restraining the Bureau from further use of these outlines.

Abraham Segel, proprietor of the College Tutors, said in defense of his company: "...our outlines have been prepared solely to be used as a supplement to the books prescribed in the course rather than as a substitute for them."

The next step was taken in 1935, this time by University Hall. Dean A. Chester Hanford had Manter Hall and the University Tutors legally enjoined from selling copies of lecture notes, on the grounds that lectures notes, on the grounds that lectures are the common-law property of the University.