Nobody knows if Harvard, or any other college, has any lasting and individual effects on its students' values, personality, or goals. Philip Jacob, in Changing Values in College, concluded that ten colleges, including Harvard, did affect students appreciably, but the book, which infuriated partisans of many institutions, raised a very serious question whether the differences between the select ten were of any basic educational significance.

Harvard may well be no more than a four-year period in the life of an individual whose life-line logically includes an experience like Harvard. If so, the changes that occur in college are simply the normal maturing of the kind of students which that college attracts. There is reason to suspect that if Harvard did not exist, these students would grow older in a very similar manner in some other setting.

Certainly, the very intelligent do mature less quickly, and would normally continue to change throughout the college years--while less intelligent students have reached stable adult-hood by the time they enter college. Certainly, too, changes toward a more liberal flexible view of the world are part of normal healthy maturation away from the inflexibility of youth. Theodore M. Newcomb observed such growing liberalism at Bennington, and related it to the faculty's liberal values; a CRIMSON study of Harvard political and religious values showed a similar trend; the same movement is clear in the studies Jacob summarized. The similarity might argue that these diverse colleges are all the tools of liberal brainwashers; a more plausible interpretation is that the "liberalizing" schools attract students who would tend to mature in a liberal direction in almost any sort of educational setting.

Those who apply to a particular college usually represent a very limited segment of the country, which finds the image of that college's graduates an attractive model. This is "pre-selection", which limits the material from which an admissions office can choose. A century ago, it presented Harvard with the scions of prominent families, who were almost certain to succeed; today it attracts the intellectually active, highly motivated, socially mobile public school graduate as well as the more traditional group. The prestige of the degree is a large portion of Harvard's function as a social escalator, but as society's instrument of social mobility, the colleges in general also offer a place to acquire the style of professional life--the style of the upper class.

Henry Adams once described the passive role of Harvard in his famous judgment that the college was good only because it did him less harm than any other way he might have spent four years. Such a doctrine is, however, bad for the educator's self-esteem, and can scarcely be the basis of an explicit theory. Today, with four of every five seniors headed for graduate study, Harvard has become the world's largest prep school. Like any prep school, it is filled with students who are essentially reduced to the rank of adolescents, because their graduation will mark only the beginning of training for a productive adult life. Like any prep school, the only significant choice, in the long run, is the next institution to be attended.

And, interestingly, this choice is largely predictable with little knowledge of the college attended. The prediction is almost as accurate for freshmen as for seniors, and primarily depends on data about the student's father and mother, about his own position in the family, and about his social and economic status.

In spite of all the epithets Harvard men attach to particular prep schools, the products of different prep schools are quite similar by senior year of college, and the distinction between clubby and non-clubby is largely the of social and economic status rather than prep school. And just as there is little significant difference between the Paulie and the Choatie by year at Harvard, there is little substantial distinction between the Harvard and Princeton graduates by senior year in medical or law study.

For a college which has capital fifty million dollars in a rather unusual form of undergraduate education, not idle to inquire whether this education actually has enduring . Today there is no evidence that Harvard brings about changes that would not occur elsewhere; there is no that House dining halls, casual contacts with tutors, and the tutorial system leave any enduring mark save fond memory.

No one would contend that a student who did not attend college would be just like one who did; but it is equally unclear that Harvard in particular is responsible for his achievements. It is possible today to argue that Harvard produces brilliant and successful men by attracting those with ability to succeed, holding them while they go through their own natural growth, granting them a diploma which carries great prestige, and, great achievement of all, convincing the alumni that the college which enjoyed was also the author of their success. Perhaps this argument can be refuted, but it is time for someone to recognize, at least, that the argument exists, and badly needs refution.