A GLANCE AHEAD

The college year now ended finds the University in an era of expansion, the greatest it has ever known. Growing pains are everywhere manifest. The remodeling of Massachusetts Hall, the erection of new buildings in the Yard, the plans for the new Business School unit, other new dormitories and a new art museum, all indicate that the physical expansion of the University is responding to the demands for more adequate facilities.

At the same time educational methods are undergoing a parallel development less noticeable to the casual observer but far more important to the wellbeing of the College. It is no exaggeration to say that educators all over the country are watching Harvard's great experiment with the Oxford tutorial system. A corps of capable tutors is being built up, slowly as is necessary to insure permanence; and most auspicious of all signs, undergraduates are heartily interested and are wholly for it.

This is especially encouraging in view of the added burdens the grafting of the new system upon the old has entailed upon the students. They are still carrying the full weight of the course system, with the single exception that candidates for distinction may drop one course in their Senior year. They are carrying at the same time added weight of divisional examinations with all the necessary tutorial work that leads up to them. Students as well as instructors have known that the tutorial system was an experiment. They have had ample opportunity to test it, have acquired faith in it, and want to see it succeed.

From the student's point of view its complete success depends upon recognition that the experimental stage is at an end, Tutorial work deserves to be given greater importance. It must no longer be left to those marginal moments that remain after course requirements are satisfied. It must become the prominent obligation of Junior and Senior years. This means reducing course requirements. Now that the tutorial system is acclaimed a success, to continue the extra burden of the full quota of courses is to dissipate the student's energies and hinder his most effective development.