TAUSSIG LOOKS INTO FUTURE OF HARVARD LIVING

The following article, which contains the substance of the remarks made by F. W. Taussig, Henry Lee Professor of Economics, at the dinner of the Class of 1879 on the fiftieth anniversary of graduation, is reprinted from the current issue of the Alumni Bulletin.

We all know what extraordinary changes have come in the last fifty years in material ways--in buildings, land, equipment. We know, too, how great has been the growth in numbers. I wish to say something on an aspect of the University's development which is not so much talked about, and which bears on the possibilities of the fifty years to come.

Growth Not Uniform

The growth in numbers with which we are familiar has not been uniform. While the total of students enrolled in the University has been from 1,300 in 1879 to 11,000 in 1929, the total in Harvard College has been from 800 to 3,200. (I use round numbers.) The University has grown eight-fold; the College but four-fold. To put it in another way: in our time Harvard College contained the great majority of the University students; now the other departments contain the great majority.

Law School Has Ten-Fold Increase

The Law School has grown ten-fold, 160 to nearly 1,600; the Medical School from 240 to 515. The latter would have many more students if it did not limit its numbers. The Graduate School, non-existent in 1879, now enrolls 900 graduates from all parts of the world. The Graduate School of Business Administration, a creation entirely new, has nearly 900. The Graduate School of Education, also quite new, has 300. Almost any one of the graduate departments would make a college about as large as Harvard College was in our day. The College is still the heart of the University, but it no longer dominates as it did.

Graduate Research Expands

This tendency is a natural and inevitable one. Advanced graduate teaching and research have developed everywhere, from small beginnings to great achievements. The country needs these more and more as it grows to manhood. And graduate work almost of necessity turns to the great cities. The centers of research everywhere are the urban centers: London, Paris, Berlin, New York, Boston, Chicago, Baltimore,--New Haven too (let us give our dearest enemy his due; he has an intermediate position, by no means disadvantageous).

College Gets Suburban Atmosphere

It is in line with the greater importance of the graduate departments that Cambridge has become a different kind of place. It is no longer a suburb of moderate size, not easy of access from the neighboring city. Harvard Square is eight minutes by subway from the heart of Boston. Old Cambridge is part of the metropolis. Its aspect has changed, and is rapidly changing more and more.

The University town is an attractive place of residence for Bostonians who have nothing to do with the University. In our day everything within a half mile of the Yard was dominated by the College, and even those of us who lodged in rooms outside the College buildings during some part of our four years were still within the academic sphere of influence. All now is different. Apartment houses crowd the streets and surround the Yard. The city engulfs-us.

Future Surroundings More Urban

And we must face the face that this is only the beginning. What will Boston and Cambridge be fifty years from now? The Metropolitan District of Boston already has a population of about a million and a half. In half a century more it will have two or three million. Like the whole surrounding region, Cambridge will be more and more densely populated. It will be a place of brick and mortar, of noise and scurry and distraction, no longer a suburb of pleasant houses, shady streets, simple and quiet ways.

This drift may well cause anxiety to the lover of Harvard College. To the Graduate Schools it forbodes no ill. A great city is a congenial and indeed a stimulating site for professional teaching and scientific research. But a metropolis does not readily foster a college. Is the old Harvard to stay? Is Harvard to remain a place where boys will grow into youths and men under the influences and in the surroundings which mean so much--almost everything--to us? Or will the College decay as the professional departments grow? Will the only colleges of the old type that remain be those in the country towns--Bowdoin, Dartmouth, Williams, Amherst?

House Plan Will Preserve College

The prospect might well seem ominous to us who love the old times and associations, were it not for the great step which has just been taken in the Housing Plan. Here has come a new element which promises to preserve the College--not only preserve it-but vivify and strengthen it.

Of the Housing Plan we have heard much. We know what it means for education in the narrower sense. It means closer association between teachers and students, a more efficient organization and working of the tutorial system, a better provision of libraries and reading facilities. It will immensely improve and humanize the material surroundings of the undergraduates, in the same way as the Freshman Dormitory system has done for the entering class.

I hope it will mean more contact between the various kinds of undergraduates, and a greater appreciation among them of intellectual ability and of intellectual achievement. No one can suppose that it will bring a leveling of students to a uniformity in interests outlook, breeding, the conventional standards of society. But it must lead to a broadening of association and acquaintance, and we may hope it will give the last blow--if indeed one is needed--to the silly notion that "C" is the gentleman's grade.

President Lowell has often pointed out how different is the attitude of American society from that of English society toward the achievements of its young men. An English university man is quite as proud when his son or brother or friend gets a "first" (i.e. our summa cum laude) as when he rows in the boat or plays on the team. Now that our class is fifty years out, we have attained this catholicity. The Housing Plan and all that it implies will promote, we hope and believe, something of the same sort for our young men and their parents and their sweethearts.

But there is more. You remember a