We found also that many, even most, graduate students were astonishingly ignorant of what one might call the facts of academic life. Thus a highly successful graduate student in one department, already a Teaching Fellow and far along in the writing of his thesis, was astonished to learn that the professor under whose direction he was doing his work would as a matter of course prepare a long and careful evaluation of the completed dissertation for use of the officers of any institution that might in the future wish to employ the student as a faculty member; and that this statement would be far more meaningful to the potential recruiters than any record of A's and B's that the student might have compiled in his early years in the graduate school. His pleasure at this revelation was so great that he was even prepared to concede that in that early stage those hated letter-grades might have been a useful shorthand device to let him know where he stood, and so might have been a positive advantage to him. . . .

Many students complained that they had far too little opportunity to explore fields of interest related to their own specialty but not allowed for because of over-rigorous departmental requirements. As in all other such circumstances we stoutly maintained that the only remedy for this grievance lay in the individual department concerned. Sometimes such intellectual curiosity may be dilettantism, sometimes in part at least a good excuse for not doing something important but difficult. Yet it might be more valuable to try to satisfy it than to force a student to conform to regulations that may be rigid, outmoded, or unimaginative. Also, even dilettantism has its uses. We believe that departments often could provide means for students to follow more flexible programs, and that, when they cannot in conscience do so, they often could explain their refusals more personally and therefore more convincingly than they now do.

Virtually all graduate student spoke with distaste of the atmosphere of competition that pervades the Graduate School. Some students, we were repeatedly told, would not discuss substantive or methodological questions of interest with their friends for fear that their friends might steal their ideas. Members of the faculty can do a good deal to ease this situation by providing reassurances to individual students.

We believe that a great deal of substance underlies the graduate students' bill of complaints, and that much can be done to lessen their malaise.

BEFORE going on to examine the problems more specifically and to suggest ameliorative measures, it may be appropriate to ask whether it matters much that graduate student morale is low. We need not pause long over the first two answers that might be offered--the humanitarian answer and the educational answer. The humanitarian case speaks for itself to those who find it appealing: it seems better on the face of it that people, even graduate students, be happy rather than unhappy. As for the educational case, there are those who think that happy students learn more than unhappy ones. But there is probably room for argument about this, and we need not insist upon it.

There is, however, a third, self-interested, and less debatable, reason for taking the morale problem seriously. The graduate students of today will be the professors and the department chairmen of tomorrow on whom we and our successors will depend to supply us with our "input" of talented students and to consume our "output" of certified scholars. Because of this they are an absolutely vital potential resource, and we cannot afford to neglect them.

It is in Harvard's interest that they develop during their years here a feeling of attachment to the Harvard community that will be carried on into the future. This is at least as important as the development of such a feeling among undergraduates. But the feeling will not be generated if graduate students think of themselves as the University's step-children, if they remember their years in Cambridge without warmth.

If morale is lower than it might be, and if this is a regrettable condition, two further questions are suggested: what are the factors within our control that account for this state of affairs? and what ought to be done about them?

The most fundamental such factor is the one that has already been referred to: neglect. There are some 3,000 graduate students as against 4,800 undergraduates; yet it seems fair to say that we devote a far smaller proportion of our thought or facilities to the Graduate School than we do to the College. All members of the Committee are thoroughly committed to the Harvard tradition that the College is the heart of the University, and ought to be. But we do believe that the Graduate School merits, both in numbers and importance, more attention than it has ever received.

For our 4,800 Harvard undergraduates we will soon have ten residential Houses, not to mention the Freshman dormitories in and near the Yard. The Houses are not merely buildings for eating and sleeping, they function as centers of social and intellectual activity, as communities in which a student holds membership. For the 3,000 graduate students of today there is nothing whatever to perform these functions unless we count that owl's share of Harkness that is wrested away from the panthers of the Law School. Nor do the apartments for married graduate students in Peabody Terrace, agreeable hough they are, fill the gap.

Another factor that helps to explain the level of morale is, we are convinced, the size of the graduate student body. We have a strong impression that dissatisfaction is least in the smaller departments. This is not merely a question of student-faculty ratio. A department of five professors and twenty graduate students is better off from this point of view than a department of thirty professors and one-hundred students, though the ratio is the same. The reason is that a group of twenty can more easily develop a sense of participation and fraternity among its members than can a group of one-hundred and twenty. . . .

There are certain affirmative measures we believe that Harvard should take that would bear directly on the factor of neglect:

*We believe that the Graduate School badly needs facilities which will enable and encourage its students to congregate. To be specific, Harvard should provide a Graduate Center. Though the Houses do perform this function for undergraduates and for the Teaching Fellows lucky enough to be attached to them, the rest of the graduate student population remains not only outside the pale but keenly aware of the contrast between the amenities provided for others and the social isolation that they recognize as their own lot. . . .

It is our unanimous conviction that such a Center is an extremely pressing need which ought to be granted a high priority in any University plans for construction or adaptation. . . . The establishment of such a Center would help dispel the step-child feeling that so many graduate students now have. The University cannot persuade them that they are cherished members of the family merely by telling them so. It must provide visible and functional evidence of its concern.

None of the students we spoke to thought that the Center should be residential. They thought of it as serving meals, providing space for social events of all sorts and sizes, and facilities for informal--and formal--groups to meet for discussion, to show films, perhaps to put on plays. It seemed of the highest importance to them that it be in or very close to the Yard. They thought that its success would depend largely upon its convenience. . . .

If it is for some reason impossible to create such a Center in the near future, the University might as a temporary alternative establish several scattered smaller gathering-places. How many, would depend on space, resources, and other considerations. But they ought to be substantial enterprises, not token arrangements for coffee or coke machines. Nor should they be strictly departmental or even restricted to graduate students in particular academic areas. The aim should be for a mixture of students from various disciplines, drawn to the gathering-place partly because it is geographically near their usual stamping grounds but chiefly because of its congeniality.

* We urge that all departments without exception undertake as soon as possible to review their present grading practices and curricular requirements in consultation with individual graduate students and groups of graduate students. Certain departments are already so engaged. Even if a department finds that nothing in its present practices needs to be changed, such a review--we know--would have the enormous benefit of explaining and even demonstrating to the graduate students why the present practices are useful, even valuable to them. We think, however, that it may be possible in many cases to minimize routine requirements, to cut down letter-grading, to accompany all necessary letter-grading by careful explanations of the judgments reached, and to reach a greater degree of flexibility in arranging for individually tailored doctoral programs.

*The departments can and should inaugurate various measures to make graduate students realize that they are citizens rather than subjects of the departmental community. There ought to be machinery for regular consultation with graduate students on all matters that affect them, and the consultation should not be confined to grievances that the students present on their own initiative. Their