That authority to grant Harvard degree credit for work done in high school or at other colleges be delegated to the various departmental Committees on Undergraduate Instruction or the Committee on Special Studies (where concentration credit is requested) and the House Committees on Educational Policy;

That the judgments of these committees be based on reports from the student's past teachers as well as his grades and exam scores. An undergraduate receiving credit for one or more high school courses would be able to take a reduced course load but would be subject to the general residence requirement. As now, previous work should be considered by a student, by his advisors, and by course instructors when he is planning his program or applying to courses.

CONCENTRATION REQUIREMENT: Each undergraduate must invest a portion-usually close to one half-of his academic program in the coherent and integrative study of an academic discipline or topical area. There are various merits to justify this requirement, among them:

The self-discipline that is fostered by the cumulative work on a problem or set of problems;

The satisfaction that comes from achieving some degree of competence in dealing with a set of inter-related issues; and

The ability to share, through formal or informal teaching, the knowledge gained in the pursuit of an extensive academic project. (This third reward is highly important, and we have taken it to heart in our conception of the January Intensive Studies period described below).

Ordinarily a student's core program of concentration is carried out under the auspices of an established department, division, or committee. Students with interests that are interdisciplinary or are in some way oriented toward one or more of the professional schools can petition to be accepted as a Special Concentrator under the auspices of the Committee on Special Studies. In cases where undergraduate programs include some work in such professional disciplines as law, theology, education, medicine, design, or public policy, cross-registration petitions will normally be honored by the various House Committees on Educational Policy.

The concentration requirement should be seen simply as a means to ensure that students take their work seriously enough to plan their undergraduate careers as coherent wholes. This was President Lowell's rationale for the requirement; for he knew that under Eliot's free elective system, many undergraduates selected their courses each term without any consideration of how the term's work might fit into their respective programs. We agree with Lowell that the requirement should be viewed as a norm and not as a mandatory stipulation. Individual cases should be judged by the Committee on Special Studies with open-minded sensitivity; and exceptions should be made for students who can demonstrate that, by virtue of previous work or outside reading, they should not be required to devote half their time to the study of a discipline or problem area.

Beyond the concentration requirement, no other regulations prescribe or limit the selection of courses or projects. The course requirements in expository writing, a foreign language, and specific areas in General Education would be dropped. We believe that the objective of distribution of course work should be encouraged through guidance rather than coerced through course requirements. Our suggestions regarding expository writing are offered below. In addition, we recommend that Rules Relating to College Studies contain a set of guidelines outlining the sorts of skills and levels of understanding that characterize what one might reasonably think of as informed men and women: competence in English composition and at least one foreign language; a taste of English literature and the literature of another culture; an historical and anthropological perspective on one's own society; some understanding of mathematics; a familiarity with one of the natural sciences and an awareness of the methodological similarities among all the sciences; an understanding of various theoretical approaches to the human personality and to human social behavior; and an empathy with, if not an involvement in the creative arts.

As a further recommendation related to concentration and distribution and to guidelines for undergraduates, we propose that all departments and professional schools make clear to entering students the types of undergraduate programs that graduate and professional schools prefer in judging applicants. Students preparing for these graduate programs would then be well advised to consult these sample plans of study.

The Individual Plan of Study...

Consists of two portions: the core concenration program and all non-concentration work, subsumed under the label general education.

CONCENTRATION: all courses, projects, and Independent Studies accepted for concentration credit by the appropriate department (s) or the Committee on Special Studies. Students who demonstrate academic motivation and ability in an introductory tutorial during their freshman year will normally be considered eligible for tutorials in their second and third years with a fourth-year tutorial optional. Special concentrators proposing junior and senior tutorials to the Committee on Special Studies must make arrangements to secure tutorial resources from appropriate departments. Students enrolled in junior and senior tutorials usually complete a senior essay or project by the end of their third year.

Any student, whether his plan of study includes tutorials or not, may request that he be given a comprehensive general examination administered by a committee designated by his department or committee. A student planning to pursue graduate studies would ordinarily profit by taking such an examination and including in his personal portfolio the committee's record of evaluation. (See the final section, on evaluation, for a description of the personal portfolio). Therefore, most students will elect to take their general examinations in the fall of their third year; and those who are working on senior essays or projects will have the remainder of the year to complete them.

TUTORIALS: We recommend that ALL departments offer introductory group tutorials for students who want an overview of a particular discipline. Students most interested would be freshmen who want an introduction to a possible field of concentration and who want to be eligible for junior and senior tutorials. Juniors and seniors might take introductory tutorials as well. In our conception, these tutorials would be historically and methodologically oriented. Most would be directed by departmental teaching fellows, and where expedient they might be affiliated with particular Houses without restricting enrollment to House members. Material covered in these tutorials should be determined by the departments themselves. Some discretion in content and a great deal of initiative in approach should be granted to the individual teaching fellow. Departments that do not have boards of tutors should establish them for the single purpose of designing and administering introductory group tutorials. As a final suggestion, we recommend that departments experiment with the January Intensive Studies period in scheduling introductory tutorials.

In our three-year degree scheme, the normal pattern of tutorials would be: