Problems to Meet

With an agenda swelled by the difficulties of wartime education, the Student Council's Committee on Curriculum and Tenure meet this week to outline possible methods of leveling current obstructions in the accelerated program. In helping to solve problems created by greatly expanded concentration in scientific fields, a shortage of instructors, and a year-round curriculum, the committee can aid the College in its effort to train as efficiently as possible a student body so needed in the nation's war effort.

Since all proposals for changing the faculty tenure system would be useless in the face of wartime exigencies, the committee's primary task is to consider dividing up the full-time college year and adjusting the endangered tutorial system. Ironing out the twelve month college program will bring to the fore considerations of three symmetrical fifteen-week terms with shortened reading and exam periods, as well as a possible plan for semesters based on the quarter system. While professors and instructors alike are leaving Harvard for various war jobs, new means of continuing tutorial work becomes a first-line necessity. And it is not unlikely that the committee will suggest group tutorial as a partial solution. These are problems which cannot be dodged, and the committee has an opportunity to play an important part in directing the University's solutions.