Other colleges, faced with the same problem, have attempted to use separate faculties at the College and at the graduate schools. The results have generally been disasterous. At Chicago and Columbia the teachers at the college level were considered second-rate by the university-level professors and by the better students. The morale of the faculty and the students, not to mention the quality of the teaching, suffered measurably.

Still, the professional teacher does have a place at Harvard, particularly in the instruction of lower level language courses. Graduate students find these courses torturous, and with good reason. In the 1956 report, it was recommended that permanent lecturers be appointed to teach these courses. Just so long as the College is committed to the languages, these basic courses must be taught, and it is obvious that a teacher of considerable training is needed.

Another exception to the rule that the best scholar is the best teacher concerns the creative artist. There are already, in the English Department, men solely concerned with writing rather than scholarship who will probably stay at Harvard for years without ever becoming professors.

Scholars Preferred

Yet these men are challenging and often inspiring. The Departments are usually too rigidly committed to the idea that what is best for the scholar is best for Harvard and forget or are afraid to admit that scholarship is not the only worthwhile creative pursuit. As a result, artists and authors are more apt to visit Harvard for a year and give extra-curricular talks, rather than courses where their ideas can be given a closer discussion and where students can exchange ideas with the artist.

Every department is guilty of what the Committee of Eight long ago noted as an "internal tendency to conform." Departments all too often recommend for promotion those men who most nearly come up to their rigid motions of their standards. And it is still an all too common practice for an aging professor to pick a fair haired young boy out of GSAS and groom his as his successor.

The 1956 report recommended that greater attention be paid to the advisory ad hoc (comprised of men in and out of the field, from Harvard and elsewhere) committee's report on a nominee for a permanent appointment. But the original nomination still rests with the departments, with the ad hoc committee advising the President on his decision at a later date. The President and after him, the governing boards, should be encouraged to prod the departments into looking around for new blood even if it makes their own boil.

But the rigid conformity to scholarship goes back further than the recommendations for tenure. It is the teaching fellows, usually second or third-year graduate students, who have the greatest contact with the undergraduate, and who are at the same time subject to the greatest academic-scholastic pressures. When their promotions are considered, their teaching record is considered, but it hardly the determining factor. They realize that the good scholar will probably gain the instructorship, rather than the very good teacher.

While there always has and probably always will be a shortage of universal men in the junior faculty, there is little excuse for the sketchiness of the training in teaching and tutoring techniques now given to teaching fellows. It is while he is at graduate school that the techniques and attitudes towards teaching of the future professor are determined. A few lectures, as now suffices, is hardly ample considering the amount of teaching done by the junior faculty.

While the techniques of the teaching fellow can be improved quite easily, the problem of maintaining even the present level of quality and native ability is quite another matter. In the sciences for example, study grants and industry jobs are awaiting even the mildly promising science student.

The University cannot complete with the money offered by big business to research scientists, although it might well make more of its unrestricted funds available to younger faculty members for private research. The University's prestige does not make up for the small salaries, not to mention the lack of facilities for young married couples.

While the sciences are having trouble keeping their good men at the teaching fellow. level, the other Departments are first being hurt at the instructor level. The promising Harvard instructor can usually count on getting a higher paying position, often with tenure, at another institution.

Temptations Elsewhere

The instructor is especially tempted by tenure at another university since the odds against gaining tenure at Harvard are always steeper than at other institutions. This, combined with the growing financial wealth of state supported universities places considerable pressure on Harvard to better the salary, living conditions, and working conditions of the teaching fellow, instructor, and assistant professor.

The demands placed upon the teaching fellow and upon the professor by the student will, in all likelihood, grow heavier in the next few years. As the level of undergraduate intelligence rises the demand for a deep and more creative teacher will grow stronger. That the level of intelligence is rising is obvious--the class of '56 scored a median of 583 on its Standard Achievement Tests while the median for the class of '59 was 631.