This is the year for a full review of the 1971 non-merger merger agreement, but the review by no means implies that there will be substantive change in the agreement this year. Full, fairly immediate merger--which would mean the dissolution of Radcliffe as an institution--seems to be out of the question.

So no one should worry that the Harvard-Radcliffe Joint Policy Committee, a nine-member group made up of the highest of University higher-ups, is going to legislate Radcliffe out of existence. What the committee will do, however, is issue a report, probably in mid-October, that will include recommendations to the Harvard Corporation and the Radcliffe Trustees on the corporate aspects of merger.

So far the Joint Policy Committee has been a very informal body, still lacking any official charter from the Harvard and Radcliffe governing boards. The committee grew out of an organization called the Joint Budget Committee, a group of governing boards members set up in 1971 to review Radcliffe's finances every year. The budget committee evolved into the Joint Policy Committee almost two years ago, and when the issue of merger began to loom on the horizon last year the Joint Policy Committee's members decided that they were the people who should be conducting the 1974-75 merger re-evaluation.

The committee met once last spring, twice during the summer and again last week, and although it has no official authority its membership--which includes three-sevenths of the Harvard Corporation--guarantees that the governing boards will not take its recommendations lightly.

The Joint Policy Committee's members are:

* Harvard President Derek C. Bok, who instituted the 2.5-to-1 male-female ratio here and reportedly favors what administrators like to call "equal access" admissions, keeping mum on merger;

* Radcliffe President Matina S. Horner, who has a more personal stake in the merger negotiations than anyone else on the committee since changes in the agreement could substantially change the nature of her job;

* Henry Rosovsky, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the person ultimately in charge of the teaching of all male and female undergraduates, who like Bok has never made a public statement on merger;

* Susan Storey Lyman '49, chairman of the Radcliffe Trustees and until last month acting director of the Radcliffe Institute, the program for women scholars that is the single biggest item on Radcliffe's budget;

* Francis H. Burr '35, a Boston lawyer who is the senior fellow of the seven-member Harvard Corporation as well as a Radcliffe Trustee;

* Mary Lothrop Bundy, a Radcliffe Trustee and the second woman member of the Harvard Board of Overseers, whose husband, McGeorge Bundy, was dean of the Faculty here in the fifties;

* G. D'Andelot Belin, Radcliffe's lawyer and the husband of Harriet Belin, a former Radcliffe dean of admissions;

* Daniel Steiner '54, general counsel to the University and a close adviser to Bok on a wide range of issues; and,

Mobil Oil executive who is second to Burr in seniority on the Corporation.

The committee is roughly split between Harvard and Radcliffe officials, although there is a great deal of overlap, with Bok, Burr, Steiner and Nickerson representing Harvard; Horner, Lyman, Belin and Bundy representing Radcliffe; and, Rosovsky somewhere in between.