When the House system was founded, one of President Lowell's purposes was breaking the hold of the Final Clubs on the College, and winning the loyalty of Harvard's undergraduates to an academic university. A strongly focused program made sense in this context. But the House system today has succeeded overwhelmingly, and the live question is whether it can survive its success.

There is, of course, no doubt that the the Houses will survive as an institution for decades, no matter what. The problem will be adapting to a series of new situations. One is the changing role of women in the University. A second is that Harvard is attracting undergraduates who do not need to be forced into intellectual life.

There is a difference of kind between a House system designed to force intellectual life on prep school graduates who already have their eyes set on careers and places in society and a system for graduates of public or private schools who have been-propelled to Harvard by their unusual ability and the doctrine that "talent is our most important resource." If the Houses are to be more than the fraternities of the intellectuals, they must now find a way open themselves to the non-academic world. The academic profession is only one of many devoted to use of the mind, but this is hard to remember when every intelligent high-school graduate is expected to serve an academic apprenticeship by concentrating in a field and is immersed for four years in an-academic community.

Closed Systems

The solid closed system of the Houses forces visitors to meet its standards. Intellectually, a girl and corporation executive face exactly the same standards when they enter a House, standards particularly focused on a fast and rather flashy kind of verbal skill that is quite rare outside the academic world and its peripheries. These standards rapidly make the Houses and the college into a closed system that rarely meets outsiders on their own terms.

Girls, as Harvard men note with-occasional bitterness, get grades just as high as men, higher aptitude scores, and more departmental honors. Either the entire collegiate grading system is such a farce that it its mere-continuation is a positive evil, or else the College has failed to cope with a very able part of the coeducational community. It is not particularly to the credit of the House system that these girls find no place, or that it cannot draw their talents into the system. Couched in intellectual terms, this is shocking waste, but in terms of the House system, it is an impressive testimony to how completely the Houses out themselves off from parts of the community.

The challenge and adventure that confronts the Houses system is not consolidating its stature as a community of scholarly young men, but expanding the notions of intellect and the community of mind. The popularity of the Freshman Seminars among undergraduates should be an adequate index of the case with which Harvard can market the scholarly enterprise to its students, but this is the easiest of the College's tasks. In the last three-decades, the Houses have matured sufficiently to take the next step.

Out of the Cloister

To move beyond the monolithic House system and beyond the monastic initiation of young men, the Masters will need courage and humility: to believe that the life of the mind has vitality outside the cloister and to admit that the single system to which they have devoted themselves is not necessarily the best possible.

Part of the change will have to be an administrative revolution that virtually abolishes the College, giving each Master great autonomy in running his House and removing authority from the Committee on Houses and the Committee of Masters. Experiments with three thousand students are almost impossible; with three hundred, they are comparatively easy.

Another part will be bringing people into the House system who do not quite fit girls, to start with, perhaps, but many others as well. It would be fascinating, for example, to experiment with young law school gradutes resident in the Houses and more young doctors. There is no reason why young academics should compose even a majority of the House staff if others can be found.

Some Houses might experiment with loosening residence requirements. The exact pattern of change in individual Houses is not so important as the determination to use the strength of the Houses is a basis for serious and sharp innvotion. Otherwise Radcliffe will be only the first to discover that the Harvard Houses have been left behind in the age that is past.