Tutorial for All: III

Although the faculty has unanimously recognized the need for giving tutorial to all men in the five large departments, wrangling still continues. Skeptics do not believe that there are enough funds or teachers to make such a plan work.

Yet the financial possibility of installing the Blackmer Plan--providing individual tutorial for honors seniors and five-man groups for the others--is surprisingly good. If every professor in each of the five main departments were willing to undertake a full tutorial load, only the Social Relations department would still need more money for a tutoring staff. Social Relations is a special case for two reasons. The number of concentrators in this department has grown rapidly during the last few years, and money allotments from the University have not kept pace. Also Social Relations always employs a large group of guest lecturers which can never tutor as effectively as permanent faculty members.

There are now two possible sources for more tutorial funds. The Provost receives over $100,000 each year unrestricted from the Harvard Fund. Further, the Blackmer Report declares, "this Committee feels the need of a good tutorial system so acutely that it as ready, with University backing, to organize a student fund-raising group." While this shows well-placed, sincere enthusiasm, Harvard undergraduates should not be forced to beg in order to receive a good education. Although the University always has more worthwhile projects than money, large scale tutorial expansion nonetheless deserves top priority.

Extending tutorial is not only a money matter, however. Faculty interest and enthusiasm for tutoring is also necessary. If all of the senior men in the English and Economics departments participated, these departments would be able to tutor all their non-honors men effectively with little outside help. Unfortunately, preoccupation with writing and government work prohibits adding tutorial here without reducing the number of courses.

Eliminating certain courses and giving others on alternate years would free many men for tutorial work. But here again the personal factor enters. A professor must want to spend this added time tutoring, or he will be pretty ineffective at it.

If compromises must occur, they should be in the scope of the plan, rather than in the quality. Non-honors seniors should be the first denied tutorial; disinterested juniors should be next.

But if all of the faculty shows the same enthusiasm for a non-honors tutorial plan in practice as it showed in its unanimous approval of the principle, there will be little difficulty in carrying out a full-scale program.

There is clearly a need for the closer faculty-student contact that non-honors tutorial would bring to the five large departments. The Student Council plan can go far to remedy the situation. Such a program is important enough to conquer any remaining obstacles.