SOLUTION

It is not enough to invoke the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah on the tutoring schools. To demand their extermination is necessary but not sufficient. It is therefore required of the Crimson to clarify its stand by stating the practical objectives of its campaign. Obviously no proposals for reform can be directed at the tutoring parlors themselves; for spiders do not refuse flies. Nor can any requests to shun the schools be directed at the students; for they will attend so long as the Square establishments offer an easy out. It remains for the University to take action.

The solution to the problem comes under two heads. The first of these is the long-run, permanent solution. Sometime in the near future, Harvard must institute detailed supervision of tutoring schools. These may still remain under private ownership and operation. However, they must be made to comply to standards of the most rigorous variety which will be set for them by the University. They should be strictly limited in their functions to tutoring of a legitimate sort--legitimate here meaning aid in cases of illness and aid to slow students who have honest difficulties in their courses.

There should be the closest possible co-operation between the college and the tutoring schools. A separate staff would probably be necessary in University Hall to concern itself solely with tutoring bureau relations. Students applying for aid would be recommended to any on a list of approved schools; and conversely, these would accept only tutees sent to them by University officials. A vigil ceaseless as that of the vestal virgins would have to be maintained in order to keep the schools within their proper limits. On the other hand, the faculty could use these same schools as sources of information about the failings in their course. Tutoring establishments could become vital stimulants for maintaining the tone of the entire curriculum.

This solution is not idealistic. Approximations to it are now in existence at several large universities. But it is essentially long-run, and for the present, there must be definitive action which runs along a road headed toward this goal.

In the immediate future, the University should institute an investigation of the tutoring schools which now exist in the Square. This investigation should be an inquiry into the methods which are now used by the cram bureaus, a survey of whether or not they comply to the standards of legitimate tutoring. If they do, they should be placed on an approved list and recommended to all students. If not, they should be summarily blacklisted, and any students who frequent them or use their products should be placed upon probation. The Crimson feels confident that, with few exceptions, such an investigation portends the latter fate for the tutors now swarming along Massachusetts Avenue.

But more than this, the University should immediately undertake an academic house-cleaning. Responsibility for the tutoring racket in its worst form lies jointly with the vicious mal-practices of the schools themselves, with the indolent students who use them, and with faults in the academic curriculum: worthless teaching or chaotic course organization. Elimination of the last means a body blow to the tutoring evil. Within a few days the Crimson will submit to President Conant a list of courses which have been indicated in its poll as possessed of glaring faults. There should be speedy investigation and remedy of these evils.

Too often is it glibly stated that tutoring in its corrupt form can never be abolished at Harvard: at best it can be driven underground. When however, this has been accomplished, the Crimson will rest satisfied. Driven underground, the tutoring bureaus are stripped of their sham of respectability. Their work is recognized for what it is; depraved and dishonest. And Harvard need no longer be humiliated by recognizing them as part of her educational process.