Savings of $75,000 Predicted by Overseers if Their Tutorial Recommendations Are Adopted

Following is the last installment of the Overseers Tutorial Report.

These several changes would, it is believed, make it possible to cut tutorial costs very considerably. Just what the economics would come to cannot be stated with any degree of accuracy. There are too many indeterminate factors. Perhaps, however, it would not be unreasonable to estimate a reduction of from $75,000 to $100,000 in the present tutorial budget. The chief saving of money would of course come about through a saving of the time of tutors. Fewer tutors would therefore be needed than are employed at present. Only the best of them would be retained; and, without raising a penny of new money, the University would then be able to promote the top men among them.

The advantages of the modified tutorial plan outlined in this report can be briefly summarized. First, the economics proposed would not weaken Harvard's educational machinery. On the contrary, it seems likely that the tutorial system would be strengthened, particularly in those Departments where it is now weak, by concentrating its efforts upon students who are able to make use of its facilities. Second, the most capable students would be given greater freedom and stronger incentive to do their best work; the less capable would not suffer any real deprivation, since, by definition, they are the ones who do not take advantage of tutorial opportunities anyhow. Third, the time which tutors now waste on unresponsive students could be employed productively on their own research and writing. Fourth, the promotion of brilliant younger men would inject new blood into the Faculty, and at the same time would reduce the turnover in tutorial personnel, giving the tutorial staff a semblance of permanence which it has hitherto lacked. Finally, the advancement of the best tutors would encourage all the rest, since it would at last become apparent that tutoring is not a blind alley but a recognized part of the highroad to academic honor and distinction.