After 15 months of forceful student pressure, President Neil L. Rudenstine announced yesterday that the University plans to extend health care and job training benefits to virtually all Harvard employees, but will stop short of enacting a living wage.

Rudenstine said he plans to follow the recommendations of the Ad Hoc Committee on Employment Policies, which released its final report yesterday. The document, which Rudenstine called "comprehensive and conscientious," rejects a living wage but recommends a broad increase in benefits for all University employees, including subcontracted and casual workers.

"It is my strong inclination to recommend that the University adopt the suggested expansion of benefits for each category of workers, and the guidelines for contracting with outside companies for services," Rudenstine announced.

Members of the Progressive Student Labor Movement (PSLM), which coordinates the living wage campaign on campus, cheered the recommendations but criticized the committee for denying their chief demand.

"What today shows is that the University is seriously moving on an issue the students brought to the fore, and that's huge," said William W. Erickson '00-'01, a member of PSLM. "The recommendations exceeded our expectations but still didn't address our main issue."

Campaign organizers met with Weatherhead Professor of Business Administration D. Quinn Mills, chair of the ad hoc committee, and Provost Harvey V. Fineberg'67 in a private meeting in Mass. Hall yesterday afternoon to discuss the committee's findings.

The report, more than 100 pages long with 16 appendices, recommends instituting near universal health care, greatly expanding job and educational training opportunities, extending benefits to casual workers and establishing a set of strict guidelines for contracting firms.

But while the report acknowledges that "it might have been easier, quicker and more popular" to raise wages, the committee chose not to establish a base wage of $10.25--originally $10--per hour for all Harvard employees, the core demand of the living wage campaign.