Slightly more than six and a half years ago, in October, 1956, President Pusey announced the most ambitious short-term effort ever undertaken to raise funds for an educational institution--the $82.5 million Program for Harvard College. Despite the unprecedented size of the goal, the Program was certainly not merely "the wealthy calling for more wealth," as one British writer put it. A careful examination of the College's needs had resulted in the goal of $125 million for specific projects, and the final goal was set only after much difficult budget-slashing.

The Program was also conservative in another respect. It intended simply to fill existing needs that had developed since the thirties. No reserve was allowed to finance future expansion or to prepare for the anticipated surge of applicants for College admission in the coming decade.

No Building

In the 25 years since President Lowell's administration Harvard had added little to its physical plant. Wartime and the immediate post-war years did not favor any major building at the University. Post-war inflation had taken a heavy toll. It cost three times as much to run Harvard in 1953, President Pusey's first year at the College, as it did when President Conant took office twenty years earlier.

Harvard's endowment income had shrunk in importance as a means of meeting the College's annual budget--from 42 per cent of the budget in 1931 to 27 per cent in 1956. Teacher's salaries, though higher in dollars, were actually lower in purchasing power than those received in 1930, a disturbing reversal of the trend in business and other professions. After remaining constant for 25 years, tuition more than doubled in the eight years following 1948 (for 1964 it will be nearly four times the pro-1948 figure!). Endowment funds to meet the mounting demand for scholarships proved insufficient.

During these same 25 years, however, while depression, war and a long inflation boosted costs and held back physical expansion, the size of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences had increased more than 50 per cent. Undergraduate enrollment rose from 3200 in 1930 to a post-war high of more than 5500 in 1948. In 1956 the influx of veterans subsided, and enrollment dropped to 4500. Still, 2,666 upperclassmen were living in facilities designed to accomodate 1,846, and 843 freshmen were crammed into living space designed for 557. More than 300 students could not be housed in University facilities.

Harvard was bulging at its seams: its House and Yard dormitories over-crowded, its laboratory and faculty office space inadequate, its health facilities scattered and outmoded. The flight of married students and young teachers from substandard dwellings in Cambridge to the suburbs was accelerating. All this formed an unpromising background if Harvard wished to contribute to the general expansion of higher education necessary in the year to come.

Thus, in 1956, the answer to Harvard's physical problems demanded a solution as comprehensive as the Program for Harvard College. In February, 1957, after nearly a year of attempting to determine the most important needs of the College, 16 specific objectives were announced. From the very starts, these were considered minimum goals if Harvard were to meet its responsibilities to the present generation and in almost all cases even the vast sums of money hoped for would not be sufficient to restore the leisure and magnificence of the Lowell days.

After three years of aggressive fund-raising and reams of campaign literature (estimated to contain twice the number of words in Gone with the Wind, President Pusey was able to announce that the fund drive had not only reached its goal but had surpassed it with contributions totalling $82,775,554.

Many of the objectives received a great deal more than was asked. The fund to create new academic chairs surpassed its goal by more than 20 per cent. Nineteen new chairs have been created with funds given to the Program, including the Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professorship, the Aga Kahn Professorship of Iranian studies, and the Dillon Chairs of French Civilization and International Relations.

More than $11 million was ear-marked for financial aid to students, nearly triple the target figure of $4 million; the funds sought to support athletics were easily raised. Both of these projects indirectly helped the top priority goal of the Program: the raising of Faculty salaries. Endowment funds of $16 million to be raised through the Program were assigned directly to Faculty salaries. This goal was not met, and a wage increase for Faculty members was financed partly through further increases in tuition and the use of unrestricted endowment income released from the scholarship and athletic programs by specific donations.

Still, if certain of the Program's objectives were over-subscribed many projects received far less than the amounts selected to meet minimum needs. The $82.8 million actually collected during the effort indicates that the Program was a success, but today, more than three ears after the official end of the fund drive, there exist Program goals which have not yet been realized.

Most serious of the "neglected" projects were the libraries and the construction of new facilities to relieve crowded living conditions for students and young faculty.

The maintenance and steady growth of a widely dispersed library system containing more than 6 million volumes is a most expensive undertaking. Yet as the Program came to a close, only a little over $2 million of the requested $15 million was received in donations for library endowment.

A library as large as Harvard's must grow rapidly just to keep its collection up to date with the results of recent research. And in an inflationary period the cost of books and periodicals has risen sharply. The cost of building operation and maintenance has moved upward at an even more alarming rate. Decentralization, which has had highly beneficial effects on scholarship, is also to be credited with sparing Harvard the necessity of replacing Widener with a vast, multi-million dollar central library building. But decentralization increase difficulties and costs in other directions.