Riesman has much more sympathy for the "dazzlingly brilliant" members of group number one who have opted for law or medical school instead of trying to make it in scholarship or art. It's what he calls the "who little me? syndrome," where students think that by taking their aspirations down a peg, they are not being "arrogant or hubristic." He blames the trend in part on the "anti-elitist, egalitarian wave of the 60's as it survives into the 70's." Such students elect these careers, Riesman says, "as if to say, "I can't salve myself that I have an independent contribution to make to make to the world, as a scholar or an artist.'"

Other members of the group number one, he says, are going to law or medical school because they ought to go there, but for the rest it is a "brain drain."

The last group--number two, actually--is the smallest. This is the charmed group that has the talent, intelligence and security to keep out of professional schools and off the Howard Johnson floor and make it in the sacred fields of art or academics.

The important factor for these students is a certain security, he says, which is less economic than psychological. "Their curiosity and interest are stronger than the need for economic security, and, seemingly and often actually, [the need for] the answer to the question, 'What are you going to do?'" Riesman says.

"Much that I know has come from Frank Fisher," he adds. Both agree that students should learn a skill--like international finance or pianotuning--to sustain their confidence and keep them solvent while they wait for their occupational ships to come in.

Still, Riesman is not very happy with the state of Harvard College now, 50 years after he came here. Some students should be going to professional schools, he says, but on the other end of the phone, I am sure, his head is shaking: "The world that you and your generation faces is a frightening one, and students behave anxiously. They sometimes in that anxiety behave in a too lemming-like way."