"A war with academic tradition," was the way Abbott Lawrence Lowell described his 24 years as president of the University. But in those years, from May 1909 to May 1933, Lowell probably did more to determine the character of the College than any other president in Harvard's history.

Discarding President Eliot's system of free electives, he began the present program of concentration and distribution, tutorial, and general examinations. He fought for the House system and the construction of the first seven Houses. He championed the British tradition of College Fellows until the University was convinced of its merit, and then, when the plan for Harvard House Fellows languished for lack of money, quietly supplied $1.5 million of his own to endow the program permanently.

While guiding the University through the chaotic two decades of the First World War, the roaring twenties, and the slump of the Depression, he stepped up such a building campaign that the College was never without a corps of plumbers, plasterers, and heavy construction workers. Significantly, more University buildings were erected during his administration than in all of Harvard's previous history.

Changed Student Attitudes

Above all, by his academic and administrative reform, he brought about both a major change in the contemporary Harvard student's attitude towards his education and a comparable change in the attitude of the public towards the University.

President Lowell, though, was not only the symbol of tremendous progress in the University; he was a personality. Occasionally irritable, often opinionated, he was, according to Samuel Eliot Morison, Jonathan Trumbull Professor of History, Emeritus, "a man who conversed rapidly and listened little." He pushed incessantly for what he wanted for the University and, as a result, generally got it.

While Eliot, in his 40 years as president, had been primarily interested in unified administration for the whole University, Lowell was concerned with academic reform within the College. The College should be the foundation on which the rest of the University is built, he declared. If the College is "not to be absorbed by the secondary school on the one side and the professional school on the other, we must construct a new solidarity to replace that which is gone."

Even before his election as president, Lowell, professor of Government, took no pains to hide his opinion that the undergraduate part of the University badly needed reorganizing. On numerous occasions he had uncompromisingly opposed Eliot's approval of both the free election system and the three year degree, so that by the time of Eliot's resignation, Lowell had made it entirely clear that he disapproved of the College's present condition.

Election As President

He knew he wouldn't be Eliot's choice for a successor, but then he knew as well that Eliot wasn't doing the choosing. In fact, the chairman of the selection committee asked to consider 24 possible names later reported, "It took about one look at the list to make it clear that the only real candidate was A. Lawrence Lowell." A scant two weeks later, Lowell's election had been confirmed by both the Corporation and the Overseers.

As the Administration had expected, Lowell lost no time in making his policy known. While President Eliot had pleaded in his final report for a sweeping adoption of the three year degree "to save the College," Lowell, in his inaugural address on Oct. 6, 1909, declared, "The most vital measure for saving the College is not to shorten its duration, but to ensure that it shall be worth saving." And from then on, the three year degree was doomed.

Not content with that alone. Lowell immediately went on to further academic reform. Within a year the College had adopted his plan for concentration and distribution, which took first effect with the Class of 1914. Under President Eliot, any student who had successfully completed 16 courses was eligible for the degree. The free elective system imposed no limitations whatsoever upon the choice of courses or their relevance to each other, so that any student who could "cram and pass" 16 times in succession was graduated. Although Lowell had vigorously and consistently attacked the system while Eliot was still in office, nothing had yet been done to change it.

Concentration and Distribution

Lacking any systematic program of education, Lowell argued, students had come to regard course work as "an inconvenient ritual" and to assume that they "could hardly be expected to take true scholarship seriously." It was "clearly unfortunate," Lowell believed, for any student to spend four years in an atmosphere where scholarly interests were so unfashionable.

To remedy the situation, Lowell passed through the Governing Board a program for concentration and distribution which has become the basis of the present program in General Education. Beginning with the Class of 1914, the Administration required that six of the 16 courses for the degree be in a single field and six others spread among three different fields. This, they hoped, would force every student in the College to achieve Lowell's ideal of a scholar--"to know a little of everything and something well."