"If the comparison is made of women in the rank of full professor, Harvard is comparable with other major research universities," Knowles wrote.

In addition, Knowles wrote that "in the past four years, 26 percent of all new tenured appointments have been of women, and this proportion exceeds all the estimates of 'availability' in the pool of candidates for such positions."

Joseph J. McCarthy, assistant dean of academic planning and a member of the Committee on the Status of Women, said he agrees with Knowles' assessment of the situation.

"The charge that Harvard is lagging light-years behind is not accurate when you control for rank of appointment," McCarthy said. "I'm not happy with where we are, but I'm encouraged by recent trends."

According to Knowles, the overall rate of tenure acceptance is almost 75 percent, which is slightly higher than in the late 1980s.

Knowles wrote that the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) is also facing some financial problems as a result of the reductions of federal aid.

"The number of admits dropped from 1,080 in 1994 [to 941 this year] as several departments chose to concentrate the available support on fewer applicants," Knowles wrote.

While the GSAS is instituting several programs to insure competitive financial aid offers and improve time-to-degree statistics, the job market continues to be of concern for Ph.D. candidates.

The number of graduate students is related to undergraduate courses through the number of teaching fellows and teaching assistants.

Knowles wrote that after the reduction of faculty pension contributions by one percent he "provided a bonus of one percent to the salaries of all faculty under forty for [fiscal year 1996], with an exhortation that this be used to replace the lost pension increment.