SHORTER HOURS

The announcement that the University is going to continue the forty-thousand-dollar Temporary Student Employment plan next year comes as a blessing somewhat diluted by the 80,000 hours of undergraduate time to be devoted to activity either wholly unrelated or only incidentally related to the educational process as that is conceived at Harvard.

So far as the University budget is concerned, practically all of the money to be distributed under the plan could just as well be administered as outright aid or in return for a smaller amount of work. The work assigned to the students employed, while sometimes highly useful, is in few cases necessary in the sense that if students did not do it, someone else would have to be hired. The only reason advanced for requiring long hours of work is that the administration of the fund as aid would have a demoralizing effect on the student body as a whole. If money is available purely on the basis of need, it is felt, the stimulus to work for scholarships is materially lessened. In short, the College should demand either high scholastic standing or hard work in return for financial aid.

If undergraduate expenses at Harvard were reduced to a level which would put no burden on the average undergraduate, this argument might be tenable. The fact is, however, that expenses are above this level and that any increase in financial aid for some students is at the expense of high costs to all. If the University chooses to apply the available money to those most in need of it, rather than spread it thin in a general reduction of rents and food prices, there is much to be said for this policy. But it should not lose sight of the fact that the real purpose of the policy is to assist men through College. In setting the prices of some of the rooms at an artificially low figure, the University has extended assistance to the needy student without requiring anything in return. It should apply the same policy to the Temporary Employment Plan, by at least halving the amount of work required of recipients of aid under it.