Class of 1948 Favors Arts in Study Choice

Harvard undergraduates exhibited a trend away from wartime's emphasis on the natural sciences as they filed plans of concentration at University Hall Friday. Figures released by Dean Hanford's office reveal a rebirth of interest in the liberal arts, with English and allied subjects leading the field.

Of the 228 Freshmen entering last June who have already reported, 32, or 14 percent, enrolled in English or literature combinations, while Economics claims 13.6 percent with 31 concentrators. Comparison with selections of the Class of 1946, peak war group, is striking. This class leaned heavily toward the Bio-chemical Sciences, 18.4 percent of a cross-section of 245 Freshmen electing that field.

Biology Suffers Big Loss

Biology, too, was hard hit by the trend now revealing itself, as in the two-year period it dropped more than 33 percent in undergraduate preferences. Chemistry, however, more than held its own, with Government, History, and the Classics attracting the same percentages in the Class of 1948 as they did in 1946. Economics, on the other hand, shows a better than two percent increase.

Encouraging as are the sings of an emergence from the heavy stress on sciences, comparison with 1932, a peacetime year selected at random, shows that the revival in liberal arts education still has far to go if it is ever to return to prewar proportions. A bare 15.4 percent of the Class of 1932 chose to major in the natural sciences, while an overwhelming 43.4 percent of the present Freshmen will concentrate in sciences of some sort.