Book Review

President Conant's annual report to the Board of Overseers is not designed for reading by the general Harvard public. But as a short course in the theory and practice of administering universities, it is an unequalled experience for the layman. It sums up in a score of pages the problems and possibilities that confront a free, private, expanding, and diverse institution at a time when uncertainty and confusion are the keynote.

There is no need to review the report like a book; surface it to say that it covers the subject and is written in a lively, interesting style. But there are important points in it that could do with restatement to a wider audience than the report is likely to get, and which give an excellent insight into just what constitutes the social, economic, and ideological foundation on which Harvard rests.

First, there is the matter of endowment. Permanent endowment, Mr. Conant emphasizes, is the key to expansion. Annual grants, either from the government or from private sources, can help a university greatly in meeting operating expenses at a time when prices rise far more rapidly than endowment income (as they are doing now), but the instructor whose salary is paid from money appropriated yearly can never be in a really secure position. Harvard, which insists on guaranteed income as well as guaranteed initial outlay before undertaking new commitments, has the example of private colleges currently in extreme financial difficulties to keep it following that policy.

Second, there are the potentialities that a large university has for supplementing the training and education of professional people in many fields, as well as providing basic training and a general education for students who have not yet entered a profession. The University already has such diverse programs as the Nieman and Trade Union Fellowships and the Business School's Advanced Management Program; now it proposes to do the same sort of work in the field of drama. Here the choice must always be made between setting up a new faculty or department, or mobilizing the existing facilities of the University around the problems of a certain profession. Harvard has pioneered in the latter kind of development, and has thus managed to create diversity without stretching resources and administration too thin.

Third, the discussion of the $350,000 athletic deficit figure and of the place of athletics in the University looks far less significant in the context of hundreds of millions of dollars and policies involving national survival. The "athletic deficit" is not really a deficit at all, Mr. Conant points out; it is a legitimate expense of college education, just like libraries and laboratories. Its cost should be calculated with regard to its importance in the college curriculum, rather than its importance being based on its financial or prestige contribution.

Fourth, the rising prices, which to the average student means a little more scrimping, have more extensive implications for the College. Inflation has cut deeply into scholarship endowment income at a time when the University is trying to expand scholarship aid to bring in a wider variety of students. "This is of first importance for the quality of the future Harvard's student body and for Harvard's role as a democratic national educational institution open to talent wherever found," says the Conant report.

Fifth, and underlying the whole report, is Mr. Conant's concept of the importance of the university in to larger setting, and of the pressures which that larger setting is exerting on the university. A university, like a newspaper, has a first duty to stay alive under all circumstances, and, if longevity is any criterion, Harvard can lay claim to the most successful formula for a long life of good works. In the President's report, there is an emphasis on planning for the future, which is only possible when the present has been laid on a firm enough base so that its problems can take care of themselves.

The present is not a good time for planning--either for the individual student or for the university he attends. "Inability to focus on clear-cut goals is probably to some degree a necessary consequence of the partial mobilization of a democratic nation. Objectives can be readily formulated in times of peace or during a total war, but not today. Nevertheless, in each segment of our national life the attempt must be made to new out at least a rough pattern for the future." This idea underlies Mr. Conant's policies, not only within the university, but in his national role as well. It is a good idea, and it reflects Harvard's attitude of cautious progressiveness which has brought Harvard to the top and kept it there.