President Pusey has taken a major step toward planning Harvard's development in the coming decade. He has asked the deans of the graduate schools and the heads of other University divisions to file detailed reports this winter of their capital needs over the next ten years. The total bill expected to run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Pusey said he would use the estimates "to formulate for my own thinking a clear sense of the needs of the University in longer terms than from year to year."

'A Continuing Process'

He stressed that the gathering of estimates was "a continuing process" and pointed out that the deans, in their annual reports, regularly keep the President informed of capital needs. According to one source, however, it has been several years since the deans have been asked to prepare detailed long range projections.

There is no timetable now for presenting any comprehensive program of development to the Corporation, and Pusey declined to say how he would use the estimates. Administrative sources speculated, however, that the President or the Corporation would go over the deans' requests this spring, and try to establish a rough list of priorities. Such a schedule would indicate to the deans which plans for new construction and expansion are feasible, and which are not.

Although the deans' requests will serve as a guide in planning new fund drives, James A. Reynolds, assistant to the President for Development, said there are no plans to draw up a University-wide program of fund raising, and doubted one would be prepared.

Reynolds pointed out that University divisions have traditionally conducted independent fund drives; "Harvard's strength is in decentralization," he said.

In some divisions, the President's request has generated new discussion about the desirability of expanding faculties and student enrollment, and also of the cost involved in such expansion. Harvey Brooks, dean of the Division of Engineering and Applied Physics, said he had appointed a special committee to consider these questions.

Brooks said he hoped to see an increase in graduate enrollment from the current 230 to about 400 in the next ten years. He said this would require some increase in tenured faculty members, and hence, in endowed funds for faculty salaries.

At the Divinity School, Dean Samuel H. Miller said he would request a new building to house the School's educational programs for ordained ministers. He estimated the cost of the building at between $2 and $3 million, and said the School's total needs in the next ten years would come to about $15 million.

Business School Plans Expansion

The Business School will seek $4 million for a new building to house its advanced management programs, and will also plan on additions to dormitory and office space for more students and faculty.

Other projects that are likely to be included in the deans' requests are:

* In the College, money for a Tenth, and possibly an Eleventh, House, new funds for increases in faculty salaries, and several million dollars for an undergraduate science center;

* In the Graduate School of Education, money to pay for the School's newly begun seven-story administrative building, and urgently needed funds to support new faculty appointment and expansion of financial aid for students;

* In the Graduate School of Design, funds for new physical facilities to replace outdated Hunt and Robinson Halls, for increased faculty salaries, and for new research programs for other divisions, $2.5 million to finance an addition to Widener Library, and $2 million to support Villa I Tatti, Harvard's center in Florence for the study of Renaissance culture;

* At the Law School, a committee headed by Albert M. Sacks, professor of Law, is currently transmitting a report to the Faculty on the School's long-term physical needs following expected changes in curriculum; President Pusey said the report would be a great help in estimating long-term financial requirements