The real reason why none of this data exists is that there is nothing approaching consensus on what it would mean if it were compiled. Criteria are no more available than the data.
This is one reason why the much-used phrase "Educational experiment" is mostly intellectual cotton candy. The other reason is the politics of making educational policy. An energetic administrator like McGeorge Bundy can push a remarkably popular program past the CEP and the Faculty; the one-quarter who opposed Soph Standing represented almost unprecedented strength of disagreement; politicking before meetings usually brings near-universal agreement or acquies cence, whatever is on the agenda. A recent questionnaire of Masoers, Senior Tutors, and CEP members indicated that not one quarter but thirteen out of seventeen favored either substantial revision or outright abolition of the program.
Once passed, however, a viable program is never abolished or emasculated; if it does not die of malnutrition, it will live. One reason why programs can survive in the face of very strong opposition was indicated during debate on Freshman Seminars. Only five of those covered in the poll mentioned above felt that the Seminars offered a satisfactory response to the problems of Freshman year, but the program was renewed almost unanimously last Spring. One member of the Faculty summed up the situation by saying that while he had no use for the Seminars, he was not going to stand in the way of anyone who thought them a good way of teaching.
"Laissez-Faire"
This is not only a very comfortable and expedient way of running a College, it keeps disagreements from reaching cutthroat levels. It is also in the best traditions of laissez-faire. But laissez-faire education, like laissez-faire economics, depends on a consumer-oriented economy. The issue of whether higher education should be a consumer industry has received very little attention.
At things stand, the fate of a program is likely to depend on how many students take an interest in it. And this can lead to some interesting contradictions. Thus, the seven-year college-law school program died some years ago for lack of student interest. Soph Standing shows every sign of prospering despite its unpopularity in Faculty circles. The ironic contrast of student opinion with Faculty attitudes was revealed in a Questionnaire by the Student Council Committee on Educational Policy which showed eighty per cent of Soph Standing students supporting continuation of the program without substantial change. As the program grows, the Faculty may well begin to wonder whether it has become committed to a baby-knows-best theory of education.
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For those who conceive a program, its exemptions and requirements are a way to achieve the goals which produced the administrative devices. The exemptions given Soph Standing students are only granted to permit them to graduate in three years. But to students, the program is just a group of exemptions and requirements, unless one happens to have the same interests as the administrators. Even the minority who want to leave in three years are unlikely to have much concern for secondary education or much explicit interest in making the Freshman year more interesting. It is a less than astonishing result that most students accept Soph Standing for reasons that seem trivial or absurd to those with a broader view.
Recent study has also shown that the boredom and apathy to which Soph Standing was partially a response may be a way for well-prepared students to maintain a sense of superiority and avoid problems of competition, rather than a simple reaction to studying material they have already covered. This may explain why the Exeter Syndrome--"dissatisfaction, disillusion, despair, and departure"--seems common even five years after the Soph Standing program got under way. Misconceptions as well as divergent interpretations have been damaging.
Beyond the perceptions of either student of Faculty are certain secondary effects, which were not anticipated by the designers of the program. One was that the concessions made in permitting exemption from Gen Ed A and lower level General Education courses became something of a precedent. More recently, Freshman Seminars have been granted similar exemptions, and there has been serious discussion of exempting students from lower level Gen Ed courses after special exams similar to those given for A.P.
Another effect has been creation of an elite whose members not only accept Soph Standing because it is an intellectual merit badge, a series of exemptions, and a way of perpetuating prep school superiority, but also take advantage of the options in the options in order to maintain a sense of belonging to the elite group.
A surely unexpected result has been an increasing tendency in recent debates to suggest that a much purer form of Sophomore Standing be given to Natural Scientists than others, because the Natural Sciences are different. That Sophomore Standing should serve to add to the gap between the two cultures is a final blow.
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The college is a social unit as well as a number of individuals, and a pilot program like Soph Standing cannot change an entire college. As a result, the danger of creating an elite or an underpriviliged minority is as important as the objective merits a program might have if made universal. This is one of the crucial issues that has been missed in abstracted discussions of three and four year programs, as in the argument that, with pure logic, asks why, if four years it better than three, five should not be the best solution of all. The process of getting a degree in three years is quite distinct from getting a three-year education in a four-year college.
Just as a pilot program must work in the context of the older structure, a new program must be developed from the status quo. In retrospect, it has become quite clear that giving Sophomore Standing students all of the privileges of Sophomores was unrealistic and unnecessary, and attracted students who might have very little legitimate reason for accelerating. But at the time, the simple elimination of one year was the least revolutionary way of shortening the college years, for it called fewer principles into question than any total rearrangement might have done.
Sophomore Standing is absolutely unique. But it is also a part of the tradition of Harvard's making of educational policy, and one can learn more lessons by viewing it as an example than as a single tedious process of fighting over an immensely controversial program.
Glossary
ADVANCED PLACEMENT: a program by which students who have done advanced work in school are given credit for equivalent college courses. Tests are written and administered on a national basis by Educational Testing Service, which also runs the College Boards.
ADVANCED STANDING: the Harvard office responsible for administering advanced placement, sophomore standing, Freshman Seminars, independent study, and early admission. Also a collective term for advanced placement and Sophomore Standing.
SOPHOMORE STANDING: a program by which a person receiving advanced placement in three courses is permitted to enter as a Sophomore in order to treat him exactly as a Sophomore, the University Wales two lower level Gen Ed requirements, the Gen Ed A and physical training requirement, and permits him to live in a House during his first year.