The University will increase the size of its graduate fellowships this year to make them competitive with Federal fellowships offered under the National Defense Education Act. The increase, however, means that fewer Harvard fellowships will be available.

It also means that the University's program to attract better graduate students in the social sciences and the humanities--and to improve teaching in middle-level courses--will have to be redesigned after only one year of operation.

"With the sudden multiplication of the number of [Federal] fellowships, we're in a rough competitive situation," President Pusey said last week. Although "our first reaction was shock and dismay," he said that most departments now believed that they could maintain or raise the quality of their graduate students.

The expansion of the NDEA program scheduled for the coming academic year will make more three-year fellowships available to graduate students across the country. The U.S. fellowships carry stipends of $2000 for the first year, $2200 for the second, and $2400 for the third--well above the normal Harvard maximum of $1740 a year.

NDEA Better?

Two factors have created the competition in fellowships: applicants for an NDEA fellowship must apply through a specific university, and they are informed of their fate a full month before Harvard announces its awards. If NDEA fellowships were worth more than Harvard's the Administration fears, many desirable students would accept one at another school instead of waiting to see whether they have won a Harvard fellowship.

J. Peterson Elder, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, has asked the Office of Education to compromise on a joint announcement date, Pusey said.