Describing the mood of graduate deans from major American universities as one of "gloomy confusion," Edward L. Keenan, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS), said yesterday that he and his colleagues fear that many fields of research will be crippled by cuts in federal aid proposed by President Reagan.

Keenan and deans from six other universities, including Yale, Princeton, and Stanford, met all day yesterday in Washington with representatives from government agencies and educational lobby groups, concluding that although reductions in student loan guarantees and fellowships may eventually be lessened by Congress, federal support for scientific research and facilities "will be cut left and right."

Harvard administrators and faculty members said this week that they expect some loss of support in the next year--particularly in the social sciences--and greater cuts in all areas over the next four years.

The government now gives Harvard over $100 million annually in various forms of support for research, training, and facilities. But some of the most generous agencies, such as the National Science Foundation (NSF)--which gave the University over $12 million last year--may be cut back by as much as 75 per cent in critical divisions. Washington sources said this week.

Suffering

Harvard "will have to suffer now and in the forseeable future" if cuts such as those in NSF survive, Dean Rosovsky said yesterday.

Keenan, who travelled to Washington with Parker L. Coddington, the University's director of government relations, said the Reagan administration "may have tried to do too much too fast" in attempting to limit direct aid to college students and to make it harder to receive federal loan guarantees and interest subsidies.

A tremendous constituency of parents, students, and educators will pressure Congress into doing "little more than nibbling at the edges, while most students will be able to scratch together enough to get to school somehow," Keenan said.

Until Reagan announces his final budget plans on March 10, Keenan and other educators "will remain fearfully in the dark," the dean said, but he added that legislators will be more likely to approve of cuts in research funding if they modify the president's proposals for student aid.

Colored Socks

"Congressmen say to me 'How can I sell this noble project to my constituency at home? and I can't tell them," Keenan explained. He added that the Reagan administration's desire to improve productivity "encourages them to support the hard sciences--engineering--instead of these social science wimps with one blue sock and one brown sock on, but in the long run, that is a mistake."

One of the most vivd examples of broad federal cuts in the Reagan plan that will slice into Harvard research projects is the expected 75 per cent reduction in the social and economic divisions of the NSF.

"They are stabbing us right in the heart of the discipline; it's as if they were taking a telescope away from an astronomer," Kenneth Pruitt, who helps direct the New York-based Social Science Research Council, said this week.

Pruitt said surveys such as the General Social Survey, directed by James A. Davis, chairman of the Sociology department, and funded by a $300,000 NSF grant, "is clearly in danger of disappearing."

The survey, which researchers across the country use as a general data base, "is the type of tool we cannot lose without setting ourselves back for many years," Davis said this week.