FACULTIES AND COLLEGES

There is nothing startlingly new in the statement of Mr. Andrew V. Corry, in his series of articles on Oxford current in the CRIMSON, that calls Oxford a "University of Colleges" and Harvard a "University of Faculties." The contrast of these two terms throws light on a number of related points particularly timely just now, when the names of Harvard and Oxford are being connected in many minds as two which are coming more and more to imply the same things.

The division of a university into Faculties, as is the case with Harvard, is planned along lines of divergence of academic interests which amount to sharp specialization. A man studies under a Faculty of his own choosing; beyond the intellectual relation the Faculty is no more to him, or he to the Faculty, than is Hecuba to either of them. On the other hand, there is the picture drawn by Mr. Corry:

"The center and soul of Oxford life is in the Colleges. The University as such receives and matriculates the undergraduate, examines him, grants him degrees, and its police powers guard him while he is outside college walls in Oxford; but every day he lives in his College and learns to recognize in it the first meaning which Oxford has for him."

Here is a very different story from the scheme of arrangement under Faculties. Scholastic, social, athletic activity, all is bound up in the College, and it is to the smaller unit which supplies all this that the undergraduate owes whatever loyalty he may feel to an institution.

It is highly improbable that at Harvard any division under one Faculty could be organized into units as self-sufficient as this. No one familiar with the University would hold such a belief. The existence of the other parts of the University, each under its own Faculty, exercises too powerful an influence to permit such a system.

There is no kinship in the University at Harvard, as there may be at Oxford. The College undergraduate does not share a community with the Law or Business School student because they are all Harvard men. What he does share with these others is the sense of a larger community wrought by no more tangible bond than the common search for knowledge. Where Oxford is a fellowship of a number of groups, each sufficient unto itself, Harvard is a fellowship of a number of individuals, each free to make his own way.

The execution of the House Plan cannot make Harvard over; the CRIMSON does not believe that its proponents think that it can, or consider it desirable. The true university spirit of communism for the individual rather than for a series of cohesive entities is an obstacle to the success of any effort to organize Harvard College along group lines, however tenuous.