Both tutorial for credit and course reduction offer gradeless, relatively independent study for some students. The line between them blurs, and it is hard to tell how much tutorial for credit succeeds when it is anything but a thesis course or a cram session for generals. Not too many students avail themselves of this privilege, which is infrequently pushed by departments.

Few Take Course Reduction

Numbers demonstrate the current insignificance of course education. It was first open in the spring of 1955, when ten students used it to eliminate one half course in favor of independent study. In succeeding terms the plan was used by 19, 17, and 9 students, while 20 used it this spring. No signs appear of any consistent upward trend, nor of any especially meaningful number using the program.

The program has certain peculiar aspects. The first is that the student is usually without supervision, once he has been accepted in the program. His field, usually History or History and Literature, recommends him for the program for a suggested study project not paralleled by courses. The Committee on Advanced Standing will usually accept the petition.

This leaves the student pretty much on his own, and if he has three time-consuming courses or a big outside activity, he may let his project slide. Many students have regretted the lack of direction in the program, but Harlon P. Hanson '46, director of Advanced Standing, is not too much distressed. He says, "Intellectual worth can be derived from a slackening of pace. Too many people here are tying their shoelaces while they run."

Much more supervision exists in the College's only other gradeless instruction program, tutorial. Often very valuable, tutorial is sometimes offered in circumstances which destroy its effectiveness.

Large, economy-size group tutorial every other week for an hour and a half can rarely provide anything better than a good lecture from a tutor.

Tutorial was intended to help the student organize the material in his field, drawn from courses and other readings, into a coherent whole. Advice and assignments from the tutor would help him achieve this unity. Tutorial does not now accomplish this for any large number of students.

Course Competition

Competition with courses remains the most serious obstacle to independent programs. As long as the College emphasizes grades, any portion of formal education which tries to disregard them will suffer unless it is exceptionally well-planned and intriguing or the student displays a remarkable degree of independence. "If you are in a system that includes grades, you commit harakiri if you try to do without them," comments Harold C. Martin, director of General Education Ahf.

Removing grades from part of education will not always prove disastrous, but it must carry the risk that a man will concentrate his energies on the graded education and neglect the untested.

This is the argument for throwing out grades entirely, at some point in a man's college career. Various schemes have been advanced which would permit seniors to use the College as they choose, fulfilling only thesis and general examination requirements. Others argue for a more gradual development of this independence, beginning it in the junior year.

Minor obstacles like graduate school admission and Selective Service classrank could almost certainly be overcome, but scientists' opposition would present a stronger check. John H. Van Vleck, Dean of Engineering and Applied Physics, contends that courses are necessary in the sciences; saying that the European emphasis on reading and tutorial applies reasonably only to the Humanities and Social Sciences. "You can browse around in literature," he says, "more easily than in scientific disciplines and the laboratories."

If this problem could not be overcomes planners would face the question of whether they wanted to increase twelve) scientist's separation from the college life of his fellows.

The most staggering problem is that of expense, for if more tutors were to be used, there would have to be money to pay them. Exactly where they would come from is another problem of no mean difficulty.