The Doctors' Dilemma

Amid all the warnings that the College is overcrowded and growing too quickly, there has been little public attention given the exact opposite situation in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. While University Hall ponders which candidates to admit from the swelling number of qualified applicants, Farlow House is forced to hold down the size of the GSAS simply because there are not enough top quality applicants to fill vacant places. At a time when the size of the Faculty is growing, the number of graduate students has actually declined.

Like overcrowding on the undergraduate level, the lack of highly qualified graduate students is not only a local problem. Graduate schools all over the country are facing the same situation, with the important difference that many other institutions have increased in size, and taken a loss in quality, while Harvard has not. The result is that much of the University's teaching resources are going to waste. With the exception of English and History, virtually every department can handle many more graduate students than it accepts.

As in nearly all of education's problems, this one has financial roots. More and more of the top undergraduates coming out of the nation's colleges today are looking for jobs with financial security. The road to success from business and law school is one well marked. But to the graduating senior, the path from the "non-professional" graduate school of arts and sciences seems to lead in the opposite direction. These graduate schools are professional schools too--for college teaching. And though the academic life is often tempting when viewed abstractly, its low pay is quickly disillusioning to the undergraduate looking for a career.

Such long range financial factors are important, but immediate needs also cut down the number of students who aim at graduate work in the arts and sciences. Many families are willing to make the cash outlay necessary for graduate study if they think it will result in the same financial success offered by law or business. But they will think twice before allowing a son to continue his studies in medieval political philosophy.

It was this situation which prompted such organizations as the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Program and the National Science Foundation to offer lucrative grants for graduate study. Yet educators are coming to realize that one-year grants are not enough. The avowed purpose of the Wilson grants is to attract into graduate study students who would otherwise not have chosen it. But for the undergraduate who looks ahead, one year of security means very little. The result is that these grants attract few applicants who had not already planned on entering the academic profession and accepting the protracted hardships that often go with it.

Financial Hardships

The prospective graduate student in the arts and sciences, then, looks forward to immediate financial hardship and the long range certainty of never making a very high salary if he chooses the teaching profession. Yet today's graduate students are the ones who must teach the bulge of war-baby students that will soon crowd into the nation's colleges. If mass education is not to slip into the chasm which many experts foresee, the continued high quality of these graduate students is more important than ever before. Obviously, there is no simple solution to these two types of problems. A Rockefeller could grant $20 million to divinity schools--but the ministry is a comparatively small profession, and each grant has results which are far more immediate than the same amount given towards general graduate education.

The Foundations have long shown active interest in the graduate schools--the Behavioral Sciences Report is a recent example. Now, it seems, they should devote a major effort to solve these two problems. Continued pressure on state legislatures and funds given to raise the endowments of private colleges are the only steps that will raise the overall scale of faculty salaries. For the immediate problems of the graduate student, possibly extended smaller grants, instead of the large one-year fellowships, might be more effective. Another possible partial solution is a system of loans given by the foundations which can grant longer terms and take greater risks than the universities with their limited resources.

The financial problems of the academic profession will not be wiped out overnight, or even over a period of years. Teaching will never be as lucrative as law, medicine, or business. But something must be done to maintain the quality of the country's education. The best place to start, it seems, is at the source: the graduate schools.