M.I.T. Succumbs to General Education Trend, Spends 25 Percent of Income on Humanities

Some years ago an instructor in English, hearing that the University had once again appropriated huge funds toward scientific studies, grumbled, "Soon Harvard will be the second best technical school in Cambridge."

But while the University was expanding its scientific departments, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was moving in the opposite direction am becoming the second best center of humanistic scholarship in Cambridge.

In the eyes of much of the general public, M.I.T. is a factory geared to the production of animated slide rules wholly incapable of non-scientific work.

This is a misconception.

Tech, following the example of Harvard and other leaders in general education, is this year pushing General Education to a point where it will occupy a little more than 25 percent of the time a student puts in at his courses during four years of M.I.T.

Actually Tech's connection with non-scientific study dates to its origin, but not since the 1930's and the presidency of Karl Compton did M.I.T.'s courtship with higher non-scientific learning begin in earnest.

Purely Teaching Organization

Before Compton took over, Tech was purely a teaching organization, rather than an institution which produced creative an institution which produced creative scholarship. The first departments Compton built up to "excellent" status were the Physics, Chemistry, Quantitive Biology, and Mathematics divisions. It was through its emphasis on these subjects that Teach developed its reputation as an engineer assembly line.

After the war the Tech administration took a long look west on Massachusetts Avenue, then took a look at itself and started to plan the core of a new humanities program. Like Harvard and its G.E. Committee, M.I.T. was worried about what specialization would do to the thinking processes of twentieth-country man.

Cautiously, Tech proceeded to build a small faculty of Economics. The Institute of Technology did not attempt to become a university because such a change would have been too costly and inconsistent with its basic purposes. When it had a few grade A economists, Tech began to seek for some sociologists, anthropologists, historians, and representatives of all other a academic disciplines.

Specialists Attracted

In each case, the specialists in non-scientific fields were attracted to Tech by the prospect of investigating their own specialties' relevance with science. For instance, expertise in the psychology of communication would work with electrical engineers while social historians would study towns such as Lowell with the aid of technical experts.

"Each year," John E. Buchard, Tech's Dean of Humanities, says, "we make more progress toward the eventual marriage of the scientific and non-scientific disciplines. Meanwhile our non-science men could teach the undergraduate engineering students."

The non-scientists first offered their services to the skeptical engineers in the form of a collection of senior year elective courses. This want's much good because the students rarely know beans about the courses they were stumbling into.

Burchard then altered the Tech humanities systems to one prescribed course per year for three years and a choice of a great book, history of thought, music, or international relations course. This curriculum was to take one quarter of a Tech undergraduate's time. Actually it required only one-sixth.

This wasn't much of a does of humanities for an engineer, M.I.T.'s Burchard thought, but he confessed it amounted to more G.E. than an incoming engineering graduate student from an Ivy League College was likely to have.

Papers in G. E. Courses

In place of the old English course. Burchard followed the pattern of Harvard's G.E. courses and inserted the writing of several papers into G.E. course freshmen took. Only if the quality of these papers was startlingly bad would undergraduates have to take a formal composition course as an extra subject. With this system, Burchard was able to squeeze two more terms of humanities content into the Tech undergraduate's curriculum.

The core to which the Tech GE program will be tied is a random study of cultures, at six weeks per culture. The culture studies usually involve guest lecturers. Margaret Mead, for example, aided a study of south sea civilization. This sort of work goes on for two years; then the student can specialize for one and a half years after which he spends a last half year in synthesizing what he has absorbed.

Ultimately, Burchard suggested, the training of an engineer might be extended in length like that of a doctor or lawyer and then the humanities requirements for engineers might also be extended.

Superior Students Pleased

Burchard also noted that the introduction of GE in earnest at M.I.T. this year apparently was popular with students of superior abilities. Less zealous or competent students tended to think of the Tech GE program as something that was chewing up their time while they were trying to become engineers.

About 25 percent of M. I. T.'s budget is being directed toward perfecting the humanities division there. This amount Burchard says is "almost as much as we'll need." It has already bought the Haydon Library, a Lamont-like structure which contains music listening rooms, glass enclosed and trickily lighted seminar rooms, courtyard gardens, headquarters for the young Humanities department, and of course, a general supply of books.