BREAD AND butter questions involving scholarships and tuition became political issues in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences this Spring, following the School's announcement in March that a special scholarship program for teaching fellows would not be continued past the end of this academic year.

The decision to abolish the scholarship program struck a sensitive nerve in the graduate student body. In response to the announcement, a group of teaching fellows and non-teaching graduate students voted to form a union, whose membership eventually grew to 1169--out of a total of 2785 graduate students.

Besides a demand that the teaching fellows' scholarship program be retained, the union has also demanded recognition as the graduate students' sole bargaining agent, the cancellation of a planned tuition increase for third-year students, a guarantee of financial support for all graduate students through their fifth year at Harvard, and a full, detailed disclosure of the University's operating budget.

The union held two "work stop-pages" this Spring--one a day long, the other lasting two days--to draw attention to its demands. It came close to striking in support of them. A formal motion to strike won more than 50 per cent support from both teaching fellows and non-teaching graduate students in the union. Under the union's constitution, however, a 60 per cent mandate from both groups is necessary for a strike vote to pass.

THE SCHOLARSHIP program whose abolition led to the formation of the union provided tuition support for all teaching fellows who lacked "outside"--federal or foundation--fellowship support and whose income was less than $6000 ($9000 joint income in the case of married students).

This year, 630 of the University's 1156 teaching fellows received these scholarships, which were called Staff Tuition Scholarships (STS).

R. Victor Jones, new this year as dean of the Graduate School, announced the abolition of the STS program in a letter sent to all graduate students on March 8. He stressed that this did not mean a reduction in Harvard's contribution to graduate student support. The $800,000 taken from the STS program would be added to the School's general scholarship budget for distribution by departments, he wrote.

Jone's letter also discussed the drastic decline in outside aid for graduate students which began in 1969-70. By 1973-74, annual outside aid is expected to have fallen more than $2.5 million from the 1970-71 level, he noted, commenting that Harvard could not possibly make up the difference.

Because of the reduction in funds, the Graduate School would have to develop a new approach to financial aid which emphasizes need as well as merit, he said.

In his letter, Jones called the STS program inequitable and unmanageable, but gave only one minor example in his letter of the program's failings.

From an administrative perspective, the chief danger of the program was that it tended to expand as outside fellowship support declined.

BECAUSE TUITION charges and abatements were greater for first and second year students than for students past their second year, he program encouraged departments to appoint more of the new students as teachers; because students without outside support became eligible for support when appointed as teaching fellows, the program encouraged departments to divide up their teaching assignments among more and more of their students.

Jones has argued that these tendencies have had unhealthy educational repercussions. For instance, the tendency for the least experienced students to be hired as teachers. In fact, he commented last week that department chairmen, too, have expressed concern about these inherent tendencies. But undoubtedly of equal importance in the decision to abolish the program were the increasing costs associated with these tendencies.

The program was financially unmanageable for one other reason. As outside fellowship support was withdrawn, teaching fellows who lost their outside support became eligible for STS aid.

In order to combat these tendencies, Jones and the Faculty committee responsible for graduate aid policies decided to abolish the program and allocate its funds for distribution by the departments.