The University yesterday released its 515-page 1980-81 Affirmative Action Plan, the latest update of a program adopted in 1972 to increase representation of women and minorities on Harvard's faculties and staffs.

Nancy P. Randolph, special assistant to President Bok for affirmative action, this week submitted the plan to the Department of Labor's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, which had received a preliminary version last August. Ran-Randolph refused to comment last night.

The plan includes statistical breakdowns of the University's workforce by gender and minority group--Black, Asian/Pacific, Native American/Alaskan native, and Hispanic--as well as each faculty's and department's goals and timetables for increasing the representation of minorities and women.

Progress and Problems

It also includes discussions of special progress or problems in every faculty and department, which, under Harvard's decentralized structure, are responsible for their own hiring.

The statistics included in the plan show that the percentage of minorities in the University's workforce is greatest in service and maintenance departments--21.7 per cent--and least among associate and assistant professors--4.9 per cent.

Terms

Women are most represented in secretarial and clerical positions--86.3 per cent of that work force--and least represented among tenured professors--3.3 per cent--the statistics show.

University-wide, 6.4 per cent of faculty members are minorities and 14.7 per cent are women, the document shows.

In addition to statistical information, the plan includes descriptions of special efforts which Randolph's office is undertaking to increase representation of minorities and women. They include:

* Holding affirmative action workshops--which would include discussions of hiring goals and timetables--for the hundreds of hiring supervisors and department heads in the University; and

* Creating a more conscious and systematic referral system for job opportunities in faculties and departments that must improve their affirmative action performances.

Universal

The plan also includes discussions of affirmative action problem areas common to higher education generally and to the University specifically. Among them:

* Colleges and universities are foregoing expansion and are reluctant to create new jobs, a reflection of the nation's declining economic condition.

* Scholars who recently received doctorate degrees may be reluctant to come to Harvard because of its standardized salaries for junior faculty members and the unlikely chance of receiving tenure here.

* Potential' faculty members may be reluctant to move to the Boston area because of the high property taxes and cost of living, the public school system, and what many perceive as a troubled racial climate.

* Harvard faces strong competition for minority and women candidates from other institutions seeking to improve their own affirmative action efforts.

* Nationally, many college graduates are entering more lucrative career fields than higher education.

*"Traditional" career patterns for women have resulted in many women serving as assistants to administrators rather than as administrators themselves.

Randolph's office is responsible for affirmative action and equal employment programs throughout the University. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences will discuss at its meeting next Wednesday recommendations for increasing representation of women and minorities in its ranks. Those proposals were made in a report presented last fall to the Faculty Council