INTELLIGENT ADMINISTRATION

Exceptions to rules, general provisions for special cases, and questions left to the discretion of deans or professors fill the Harvard catalogue. This is entirely logical and satisfactory. No set of rules could apply invariably to the heterogeneous mass of students. Some would get a better education if excused from literature, language, or other requirements, some would do better with more required work. These exceptions should not be sacrificed to a superstitious reverence for the literal and complete enforcement of rules.

Naturally, those who are in the best position to judge in individual cases are tutors, advisors, and assistant deans. They have the most direct contact with students. They should be given more power in the direction of student careers. Harvard College cannot be run on the unchanging principle of scientific management, the removal of all responsibility from subordinates. Trained apes would not make the most efficient deans and tutors. To make a really effective tutorial system, there should be a great decentralization of power among the tutors. To make the assistant deans really helpful to students, they should be given more authority. This point has been made before in these columns.

To make effective, therefore, the provisions in the Harvard catalogue, the power to enforce them should be put in the hands of those who are best fitted to judge. At present, if a student thinks he would benefit by exemption from a rule, and if his tutor agrees with him, he must petition a harried official who-knows nothing of his case, and who naturally hesitates to encourage the trouble of handling many new petitions. For that reason, practically no exceptions are made. In the case of language requirements, except in the case of misunderstandings leading directly from their own office, the deans have never allowed exceptions. There has not been one case in which an exception from this rule was thought desirable. The tutor knows his tutee's situation. He knows the philosophy behind distribution. There is no reason why his recommendation should not be taken.

Decentralization of power should not only work for exemptions. Tutors and deans should also be able to add requirements, and have the power to enforce them, in the cases of individual students. There are certainly many cases of students who are frittering away their educational opportunities beneath their impotent tutors' noses. They have no way of forcing their tutees to work, of putting them on their own probation if they are wasting the value of Harvard. The tutor is in a position to judge whether his tutee is coasting through college with the help of tutoring bureaus, or whether he is using the spare time which these facilities give him in enlarging his culture and intelligence in other ways. No rules can see or differentiate between those who are doing well and those who are coasting through without any serious education whatsoever. Deans and tutors are in a position to make just this distinction. They should be given the power to save the sinking souls of their tutees or advisees by enforcing any requirements which they see fit to enforce.

All this assumes an intelligent body of tutors and deans. Harvard has such a body. If there are individual stupid, narrow, or unjust ones, there is always the possibility of appeal, and a change of tutors. This would not be done by those who really were coasting. If there are tutors or deans who are inclined to be too lenient in their exemptions, this could be corrected in the present manner. The change would be a great and important one, but it would be a matter of degree. So long as some such shift or decentralization does not appear, the full advantages of the tutorial system and of the body of deans cannot be achieved.