Greater than our vague social responsibility to expand per se, he believes, is our responsibility "to maintain the highest level of liberal education ... even more so because of the threat of the serious watering down of liberal education."

With more people coming to the colleges, he adds, there will naturally be a concurrent increase in the number of highly intelligent applicants. With more top-rank people to choose from, admissions policy could become much more select.

Even if Harvard were to expand, it wouldn't make much difference, proponents of the status quo contend. Even if the College doubled in size, it would be providing educational facilities for only 1.6 percent of the increase in the year 1960 alone. There are a number who will argue, then, that the college would be better advised to spend it money for improvement of present facilities.

Among this group are those who hold their heads and moan about problems, problems; but there are many who sincerely feel that expansion would be useless. These have already been answered by President Pusey.

Last year, he said that more selective admissions and no enrollment increases would be unfortunate, "not only because ... admissions techniques are not sufficiently sensitive always to pick the 'right' ones, but even more because such a policy would lessen the total weight of the private college in our total educational landscape."

A few Eggheads

The second answer, then, would be an expansion parallel to the increase of college age children which would demand a student body of 10,000 a total of twenty house, and incompatibility because of sheer volume with the present character and standards of the House.

The ultimate answer lies in the third alternative: partial expansion to, perhaps 6000. While an increase of 1500 would soak up only a drop of the torrent, it can be justified on both practical and theoretical grounds.

Rhinclander feels that tool expansion is impossible, and as for a more selective admissions policy within the present size college, he says, "I'd be worried if Harvard came to the point where it attracted no students other than proto-Ph.Ds... to the exclusion of the practical men of affairs. We need more, not less, contact with the public."

This view is shared by Fair, who maintains that "this is not a University for a few eggheads. It must be for the stimulation as well as the preservation of knowledge. An ivory tower is not enough."

A Policy of Insurance

Once justified, even partial expansion offers complex problems of implementations. By simply expanding at a rate slower than the increase in eligible students, the admissions policy could become increasingly selective. But even this aspect of admissions is immediately complicated by the specter of Multiple Applications.

Even now, admissions offices are flooded with applications, many from students who are applying for insurance, rather than admission, so they will have some place to go it they are not admitted to the school of their first of second choice.

As larger public institutions offer increasingly dilute, impersonal education, private colleges will become all the more desirable, and multiple applications could soar frighteningly.

Frank H. Bowles, Director of the College Board, describes the present problem as "the result of poor advice in both school and college, of the case of making duplicate applications, and faulty administrative practice in both college and schools. It is not really an educational problem, because it is not affecting standards in any except far-fetched ways, but it is a terrible nuisance, and has to be recognized as such."