THE M.A. DEGREE

The President and Faculty face an important task in the revision of the requirements for the Master of Arts degree and in the adaptation of the methods of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences to the needs of the present Harvard graduate. The College's advancement in scholarship, brought about partly by the introduction of the tutorial system and of the divisional examinations, has left the Graduate School inadequate in certain respects. The requirements for the Master's degree are based largely upon the needs and ability of a student who has not had the advantages of tutorial work and divisional examinations and who may not possess as great a knowledge of his field as a Harvard graduate in that field.

The general qualifications for an M.A. degree set by the Graduate School requires a year's residence in Cambridge, the student passing four courses with grades of B or higher except in those few departments which require general examinations. He may take two of his four courses from the more elementary group open to undergraduates; and yet he receives the degree he would have obtained had he done advanced work exclusively.

The President in his reports for 1930-31 has recognized the existence of three classes among the men of the Graduate School: those seeking an M.A. degree to permit them to teach in a secondary school; those wishing to do further research before starting industrial work; and those training for a teaching position in a college. The members of the first and second classes far outnumber the third and tend to retard the people trying to get ahead scholastically. President Lowell's action in establishing the Society of Fellows is in part an effort toward freeing these especially gifted men from such restraint.

Considering all aspects of the situation, there seems to be one practical method of obliterating the faults of the present system, and that is to base the requirements of the M.A. degree upon a thorough examination in the field. This practice of giving general examinations to graduate students would not only permit the particularly gifted men to attain more quickly to the higher degree of the Ph.D., but would enable the others to profit by the general knowledge of the field acquired in meeting the requirements for the degree.