In part, the new five-year program was designed to overcome objections about the school's small size. Goldhaber says. Unless the graduates went on to achieve extraordinary success and had "some sort of ripple effect," says the dean, "one could question whether with that small enrollment it was worth having a dental school."

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But the absence of a graduating class this year doesn't faze the school's administrators--it's happened before. In 1917, for instance, the school went from a three- to a four-year program, wiping out its potential 1920 Commencement line-up.

Then in 1941 came a change in name, from the Dental School to the School of Dental Medicine, and along with it, a new five-year curriculum towards both the M.D. and dentistry degrees. But as Goldhaber explains it, the armed forces disapproved of the time-consuming double degree and, with a military fervor sweeping the country, the school decided to change its program once again.

This time, the school tried a six-year curriculum involving two years of basic science at the Medical School, two years of training in clinical dentistry, and the option to return to a Harvard-affiliated hospital for two years of clinical medical training and a medical degree.

In 1954, however, this option was removed from the curriculum. "Too many students ended up M.D.'s rather than in dentistry," Goldhaber says. Today, dental students do have the option of completing the first two years of the program and then transferring to a medical program, although the medical school cannot be Harvard's.