Kimball says the subject matter "isn't as important as you'd think. It's the faculty that really draws the alumni in."
But the alumni office realizes that many people will want to return for a new subject, and so it changes the programs every year. Once an idea is agreed upon, the office sends out 80,000 brochures to the alumni and publishers advertisements in the graduate school publications and other magazines. Anway says that much of their advertising is by word of mouth, as people who come one year tell their friends and acquaintances about the college.
Shultz says the idea of the alumni college started floating around in the early 1940s, because it seemed "stupid not to use the University's academic facilities" to bring the alumni into the University community. At that time, however, he says the faculty and the administration weren't interested because they didn't feel comfortable with the alumni.
"Alumni were thought of as racoon-skin-capped, musket-carrying people who only showed up for football games--and thank God the stadium's across the river," he says. But that attitude changed with a new batch of senior faculty. Shultz adds, and when Dartmouth and Cornell started alumni programs the Harvard alumni office begn to work on a comprehensive proposal.
"We kept beating the drum, and finally got the trustees to set up a committee to examine the existing programs," he says.
In 1970 the committee gave the program a firm recommendation, and President Pusey, "who was very mellow" by his last year in office, agreed to it, Shultz recalls. "His attitude was, if you can talk the faculty into it, go ahead," he says.
The first program was offered in 1971, and it received double the number of applications the alumni office had expected. "The comments we got justified our theoretical base." Shultz says, and the alumni office's continuing education program became an established reality.
Since then, the office has been experimenting with different programs aimed at different kinds of alumni. One of the problems with the alumni college is that it tends to draw the older, wealthier alumni, and the office is working now at finding ways to attract a broader group. "We mainly get middle-aged to older alumni, between the classes of '40 and '50." Anway says, although they get alumni from both extremes as well some come with their babies, she says, and Helen J. Almy '05 says she plans to attend this week's session on Soviet Russia "unless I feel too old by the time it starts." Younger alumni find it hard to leave their children and jobs and often can't afford the trip to Cambridge.
The office is considering starting week-end alumni programs at Harvard during the year, and earlier this summer it ran a Thursday-through-Sunday program on American literature at a college campus in northern California. Kimball, who attended that session, says the alumni who came were much younger, on the average, than those who come to Cambridge. Alan E. Heimert '49, Cabot Professor of American Literature, who taught the California session, says he feels it was very successful, although he adds it was "exhausting" because it was so intensive. The alumni office plans to offer a similar program next year in southern California, Kimball says, because there is a high concentration of University alumni in that area.
The alumni office also plans to begin to explore new formats and areas. On August 6-40 alumni and two experts on Nordic culture, Janet and Ulf Rasmussen, will leave for a cruise in Scandinavia. While the cost of the cruise--between $2074 and $3471--may keep many younger alumni from joining it, Kimball says he feels it is important that the office continue to explore different possibilities for continuing education.
A recent opinion poll of Harvard alumni showed that contributions increase when the University makes efforts to keep in touch with its graduates, but everyone involved with the alumni colleges seems to feel that fundraising is none of their business. Downey, Shultz and Kimball emphasize their lack of interest in increasing donations.
"We don't know how it affects donations," Shultz says, "but we feel that if you send 300 people out across the country talking about how Harvard's teaching has improved, it can't help but help in the long run."
Kimball points out that the alumni office is designed to be distinct from fundraising efforts, and she says it would "resist anyone interested in raising funds sponsoring an alumni college." Every alumni college is designed to break even, she says, and if it isn't self-supporting, it won't be offered.
The alumni colleges have only one stated goal: to offer alumni a chance to continue their education after they graduate. Shultz says he feels it is especially important for the middle-aged alumni who want to enrich their lives, who feel they're missing something in mid-career. "There are tremendously exciting possibilities in continuing education, and we've just cracked the surface," he says. Downey's attitude is similar. "I'm really excited by the adult capacity to grow, to learn, to develop," she says. If attendance is any indication, the alumni themselves seem to share in this excitement, returning year after year to programs which may or may not have any connection to their lives beyond the University's reach.