The Graduate School of Education (GSE) may feel a bit top-heavy starting next weekend.

On July 19, 44 college and university presidents will swarm in for the GSE's seventh annual Harvard Seminar for New Presidents.

At the seminar, presidents will attend sessions on topics ranging from fundraising to trustee relations to technological change.

According to program Chair Judith Block McLaughlin, the greatest benefit the seminar provides the new presidents is an important network of colleagues.

"They don't have the luxury of meeting other presidents," McLaughlin said.

According to McLaughlin, the GSE sends out invitations to newly-appointed presidents of academic institutions, including public and private junior colleges, colleges and universities in the United States and Canada.

The school could not accommodate all the new presidents who want to participate, McLaughlin said, and about a dozen were deferred until next year.

Ford Professor of Social Sciences Emeritus David Riesman said that incoming presidents face hard times, financially and socially.

"I tell them, if you aren't frightened, you should be," said Riesman, one of the instructors at the program.

McLaughlin said that by tracking all newly-appointed presidents, the GSE is able to identify trends in academic leadership.

In 1994, for example, the GSE noticed a sharp increase in the number of newly-appointed female college presidents. Since then, women have made up more than a third of New President Seminar participants.

This year, McLaughlin said, the trend is toward politically-experienced presidents. Five program participants, including new University of Massachusetts President William M. Bulger, have experience in local and national legislatures.

This trend reflects increased concern among universities for their government funding, McLaughlin said. Public institutions, which are especially dependent on government funding, sent four of the five presidents with political backgrounds.

Universities are betting that former legislators have the connections necessary to guarantee continued funding, McLaughlin says.

McLaughlin predicted that if these presidents are successful, more universities will appoint politically-experienced presidents in the years to come.

Three of the new presidents who will attend the seminar hail from Massachusetts institutions. Besides Bulger, the presidents of Nichols College in Dudley and Greenfield Community College will also attend.

According to McLaughlin, President Neil L. Rudenstine did not attend the seminar in 1991, his first year, due to a scheduling conflict