Gardner says many academic and cultural trends have made the University a more diffuse place.

"Today the University is more science-oriented," he says. "Research makes Harvard less of the focus, to its loss. It is more difficult to have relationships with professors.

"Most people who were recruited came to Harvard. People considered themselves 'citizens' of Harvard. But today other schools can attract people also."

Changing Students?

Harvard and Radcliffe alumni who stayed at the University also comment on the changing composition of the student body.

"Today Harvard is more varied," says Gardner. "There are more Orientals, more Blacks, and fewer legacies...which may be bad for fundraising but good overall."

Hayes and Herzog both find that today's students are both very similar and very different from their predecessors.

Herzog, in particular, says he has taken another look at Harvard since his daughter Eve matriculated.

"The women of today are different from the Radcliffe women of my day. They are Harvard students...belonging to two worlds as opposed to one," he says. "[As first-year students] their allegiance is to the Yard...which is an experience similar to my own."

But although the rules may have changed, Herzog says there are still many similarities between today's undergraduates and those of 1961-65.

"If given a chance, the students are interested in learning everything," he says. "There's a special feeling that one knows how to learn and wants to."

Hayes says that students, then as now, have not been able to enjoy life to the fullest.

"Life doesn't look happy for them, but I may be viewing them in the wrong setting," he said. "They're painfully competitive. They have a reluctance to speak out out of fear of looking foolish. People have a sophisticated glaze that makes it hard to enjoy life."

Bean-Bayog says that women at Radcliffe were "somewhat more protected then." Today, Bean-Bayog says she "feels protective of her students [at the Medical School] who are flooded with ideas and expected to perform [under immense pressure]."

Graduates say University emphasis on teaching has increased.

"We gave the professor the benefit of a doubt," says Gardner. "We assumed that he knew what he was talking about. It was our problem if we didn't get it, our inadequacy.

Now, Gardner says, the University atmosphere fosters good teaching. "[President Derek C.] Bok was good for making people think about teaching. And I think that it's bad form to be a bad teacher," he says. "Bok was more in touch while Pusey was incredibly remote."