The salaries of Harvard's teaching fellows will be boosted by 17 to 25 per cent this year, Dean Ford announced over the weekend.

The salary increases, stated in terms of teaching loads called "fifths," are: for senior teaching fellows, an increase from $1200 to $1400 per fifth; for junior teaching fellows, an increase from $880 to $1100.

The decision to raise the salaries, which was made in the face of a large projected budget deficit from 1968-69, was necessary to keep up with increased cost of living for teaching fellows, Dean Ford said. The raises will put an additional burden of $300,000 on the already-tight Faculty of Arts and Science budget, Ford said.

'Simply Gambling'

Ford added that there was "no new item of income that specifically justified" the $300,000 expenditure. To find the extra money, Ford said he was simply gambling that the Faculty of Arts and Sciences could receive more money than it had originally been budgeted, or that the deficit could be covered through "the normal channels"--such as surpluses from the summer school.

The Dunlop Report, issued last May by the Committee on Recruitment and Retention of Faculty, recommended that junior faculty salary levels be raised. The report, however, covered only the pay for junior and senior faculty members, and did not make any specific recommendations about the teaching fellows' pay.

The teaching fellows had received two "cost-of-living" pay raises between 1962 and 1966, and in the Spring of 1967 the Federation of Teaching Fellows began to push for another increase. The Federation also asked the university to abolish the pay differential between junior teaching fellows (those who have not completed their residence requirements for their Ph.D. degree) and senior teaching fellows (those who have).

Last Fall, after Dean Ford and Dean John P. Elder of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences rejected the requests, the Federation began a quiet campaign to enlist the aid and sympathies of tenured faculty members at Harvard.

The current pay raise, made after several months of study by Dean Elder's office, maintains the pay differential. In addition to the pay that GSAS students may earn as teaching fellows (each is allowed to teach up to three "fifths"), many are granted scholarships to cover part of their tuition.