Harvard will raise its board rate next year for the first time since the academic year 1959-60, L. Gard Wiggins, Administrative Vice-President, said Friday. Board is now $620 per year.

In a joint interview with C. Graham Hurlburt, Jr., Director of the Food Services Department, Wiggins said the size of the increase will not be made public until early April after a new labor contract has been negotiated.

Hurlburt attributed the increase--the first since he began streamlining the kitchens in 1959--to general inflation in the economy and to the prospects of a further deficit when the new Mather House is completed in 1969.

"We've made a whole series of changes in the operation of the Food Services," Hurlburt said, "and up to now have managed to save enough each year to offset costs. But next year, according to our projected expenses, we would be in the red without this increase."

Hurlburt cited increases in the costs of food, labor and equipment as the major factors behind the impending hike. But the action also takes into account the expenses of expanding the Dunster House kitchen facilities to provide for Mather's students.

"If 300 off-campus students are required to return to Mather then we will break even. If not, we will probably have to raise board again," he added. Hurlburt has recommended off-campus living be substantially curtailed.

For the past nine years, Hurlburt has instituted a series of improvements in his Department, avoiding the board-rate increase which had come once every two or three years before his arrival.

Hurlburt improved the methods of food procurement, sending meat inspectors to wholesale markets, for example, to stamp suitable purchases. In addition he arranged better use of employee time, maneuvering carefully at the fringes of union regulations.

Finally, he mechanized many aspects of the kitchen:

* Before 1960, the serving ladies poured every glass of milk and then left them stacked on trays. Hurlburt put in automatic milk machines, which saved time and kept the milk cold.

* Again, before Hurlburt came, an employee used to push food from the Central Kitchens down long tunnels to the Houses and the Union. Hurlburt instituted a railroad set up, using heated carts.

There are certain further steps which Harvard might take to avoid raising board, but Hurlburt and Wiggins agreed that decreasing the quality of the food, reducing the hours the Dining Halls are open, or closing some of them down on weekends was not in the students' best interests.

Wiggins said that, in the past, hikes in either tuition or board have been met with corresponding increases in scholarship appropriations.