Fisher's role at the Office of Career Services and Off-Campus Learning is no abdication from weighty governmental issues, however, because more than simply supervising the attempted placement of students in jobs they want, Fisher is witnessing what he is convinced is a cultural adjustment of mammoth significance. With the burgeoning proportion of college graduates in the work force, and the presence in the culture of more and more institutions directed towards the educated, society experiences a "geometric jump" in its numbers of educated masses, he says. The growing pains are tough, Fisher concedes, because college graduates must learn not to regard their college experience as only a prelude to professional employment, but instead should adjust to lead lives uncheapened by work they consider--beneath them. A liberal education can be a significant personal experience, Fisher says, but it cannot promise to give students "earthy vocational skills." What is more important than reconciling the disappointed college-graduate job-seeker to employment below his station is the "question of how we can take advantage of this great ability to educate people, how we can recognize this as a symptom of success," Fisher says. "The forces we're talking about are much greater than the recession. They're secular."

As director of the OCS-OCL. Fisher makes $28,000 a year--$8000 less than his salary at the top of the civil service, and he does not have the notoriety he had, say, when he forced all-white Warren, Mich., a suburb of Detroit, to integrate its work force in 1969. Neither of those perquisites--money or notoriety--is as important to Fisher as the sense that he is dealing with big issues, and he is pleased with his work at 54 Dunster Street. "In general a job is pretty exciting if you can catch a couple of hours of grand policy every week," he says with no effort at a smile but with his right eyebrow darting halfway up his forehead.

* * * * *

Frank Fisher has learned quite well how to live with himself. On this Sunday morning the oak logs that he cut from the forest on Blue Hill south of Boston are burning in the old Franklin fireplace on the first floor of his half-house on Farwell Place. Fisher says he emerged from "narrow scrapes" with marriage in his middle years, and is much more secure in his solitary situation today. "The conventional pressure to follow a particular family pattern was ever so much stronger 25 years ago," he says.

Fisher has accumulated a throng of "collateral interests" that he cultivates because he is a man who does not like to distinguish between his vocations and avocations. He has played the recorder since law school ("The problem of getting the next note was a pleasant occupational relief from the problem of studying law") and he is the only one of his father's children to have inherited the old man's fondness for bird-watching. Fisher also cooks, sketches, sails and plays chamber music.

Down the block from Fisher's house is an old brick apartment building that some developer has settled upon as a likely spot for condominium living. Workers are clearing out the interior and leaving a pile of rubble outside the building.

A tall and athletic-looking man with springy joints, Fisher is also a connoisseur of junk-heaps, and for the past few weeks has been salvaging wooden beams from his neighbor's yard. He is building a sculpture in his kitchen. He calls it "lobster pot" and it is destined for a spot in the OCS-OCL, library, Lobster Pot is a nexus of three pier-like beams jutting up from the floor and plastered with wooden slats that look like misbegotten orange crates. Lobster Pot is ugly, but Fisher's visitor doesn't know how to say so.

At first he suggests that Fisher's colleagues at OCS-OCL might not like the piece, but Fisher only replies that they will have to wait around for his next sculpture. It seems that Fisher has already begun planning his next, a snakish coincidence of twisted plastic pipes--again, salvaged--and that no arbitration by outside judgment will deter him. Still, the visitor is perplexed. "Aren't you a bit foolhardy?" he ventures.

And at that first genuine compliment. Fisher breaks into a genuine grin. "Why thank you," he says.

From his metaphor, which borrows extensively from bureaucratic argot, to his willingness to compromise on ideals, Fisher is somewhat anomalous in the academic community.