When Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell instituted the House system more than 60 years ago, he radically transformed life at the College.

For the first time, Harvard students and faculty members would eat, sleep and study together in an intellectual yet relaxed atmosphere, much like at Oxford and Cambridge. And tutorials--the interaction of students and resident academics in small groups--was to form the cornerstone of life in the Houses.

But today, more than a half-century later, tutorials have become very different from Lowell's original conception of them.

For one thing, students and tutors--frequently from different houses--rarely meet outside of class. And more importantly, the leisurely atmosphere of tutorials has changed as the pressure on tutors to do research that will get them future jobs has intensified.

Presently, administrators are studying Harvard's complex tutorial system, making an effort to assess how they work, and ultimately, how they should work.

Mountains of data collected from a general curriculum review launched last fall are now being studied, says Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education David Pilbeam, who headed the curriculum review. Among the data collected, though not yet tabulated, is information about the size, composition and content of tutorials across Harvard's 42 departments.

The curriculum review came as part of Dean of the Faculty A. Michael Spence's desire to collect through statistics on each department before offering a detailed plan for expanding the faculty.

The results will throw light on Harvard's tutorial system, which is varied and has been subject to little centralized review, Pilbeam says.

"There's a great deal of variability in the system from no tutorials to non-credit tutrorials, from departments who only have sophomore tutorials to junior seminars and junior tutorials--there's a whole range," says Pilbeam.

Tutorials Then and Now

Tutorials have long been a topic of campus debate. In October 1931, back when the house plan was incomplete and tutorials were offered in only a few subjects, a student council committee report praised the idea of tutorials and recommended that they be offered in more departments.

But the report also said that Harvard was tenuring good scholars without enough regard to their tutoring skills.

And an October 10, 1931 editoral in The Harvard Crimson said, "it is hardly necessary to state that a personable tutor, one who has the ability to interest his individual pupil, will develop into a more human, more understanding professor, than a young Ph.D. who has advanced to the stage of an occasional lecturer, but who cares only for his own scholastic advancement."

Ultimately, however, the tenure process became only more intense and research-oriented.

With the arrival of James Bryant Conant to the presidency, a scientist who disliked the College's leisurely pace, Harvard began to move away from Lowell's ideals. Conant admired the intense, research-oriented German colleges, and introduced the "up or out" system, which gave junior faculty approximately eight years before they were either tenured or dismissed. The system has existed ever since.