The Price That Must Be Paid

"Curiouser and curiouserl" cried Alice, when, after eating the cake in the rabbit's cavern she began to grow nine feet tall. While most Harvard people would correct Alice's grammar, and blame Malthus rather than the cake, the note of incredulity usually remains as they watch the University's policy toward the rapidly rising demand for a Harvard College education.

It is easy to explain the bewilderment itself. Although neither President Pusey nor other administrative officials have charted any sort of University policy toward expansion, it seems widely assumed that the University must and will increase its enrollment. But this tacit and passive acceptance of expansion is very dangerous. Such a vague commitment to grow could lead to the slow disappearance of integral parts of the Harvard education which will not be missed until they are gone. The Administration's policy should be clear and precise and must attach a price to growth: maintenance of adequate facilities, including libraries and laboratories; avoidance of dormitory overcrowding; and--most important--preservation of close faculty-student relations. If this price is too high, then Harvard College should be committed to non-expansion.

"Modest Proposal"

There is a group of faculty members and students who argue against numerical growth, not only because they feel that the University would be unable to retain its distinctive advantages under an expanded program, but also because they think Harvard really has no responsibility to grow. The University's primary obligation, they argue, is to maintain its own educational quality unblemished. While history may easily prove this group right about the college's chances of successful expansion, their advocacy of retreat from the problem is unfortunate. Their arguments seem as snobbish as Jonathan Swift's "modest proposal" that poor children be sold and fed to rich children in order lower class incomes. Unfortunately, unlike Swift, they take their argument seriously. They fail to realize, however, that the University can hardly remain a leader in education while ignoring the main educational issue of the day.

On the other side of the fence, many administrators and faculty members think that the University must expand at any cost. Faced by statistics which predict the doubling of applications to the College by 1965, they advocate that Harvard admit six or seven thousand students, even if it requires thousand--man lectures and the climination of tutorial. Such changes, however, might constitute a radical transformation in the education the College now offers. They would open the door to increasing mediocrity in instruction and physical facilities: an after-dinner sleep for Harvard College.

Actually, it is hard to avoid the pessimistic conclusion that the prophets of gloom have the figures on their side and that Harvard will not be able to reconcile expansion and continued quality. Even now, the University cannot meet certain significant challenges. The dormitories are greatly overcrowded, many lecture rooms are bulging, and laboratory space is inadequate. The cost of new Houses merely to alleviate the present room shortage is staggering, and a campaign for funds to build enough new Houses, classrooms, laboratories, and another Lamont, would absorb the University's energies for at least the next ten years. Most crucial and important of all, the enrollment of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences is growing smaller as fewer high-quality students choose the low-paid teaching profession.

Setting the House in Order

Some proponents of expansion have argued that the College's growth at a rate of roughly 45 per year over the past 80 years shows its ability to continue to do so in the immediate future without damaging its educational standards. The conditions of the past, however, hardly offer a guide for the future. In the past the expansion kept even pace with the demand, and the demand itself was so small that anyone who could pass the entrance tests was almost guaranteed admission. No longer can the University even begin to cope with the demand. Probably no one--in his wildest dreams--thinks that Harvard could admit the several thousand qualified applicants to the freshman class which it expects by 1965. But any enrollment short of that figure is just as arbitrary as the present limit.

Despite all the disadvantage of a rash expansion, there remains the possibility that the College can set its house in order now and still be able to accommodate an increased enrollment in the next ten years. Endowment miracles have happened before in American education, and Harvard should now try to "make a miracle." It should expand and improve its physical facilities, recruit faculty members, and attempt to get the tremendous funds necessary to guarantee an unimpaired Harvard education for increased numbers of students.

But if the University does fail to meet a "five-year plan" or "ten-year plan" for expansion, it need not wholly detach itself from the issue. Harvard could still actively contribute to the solution of the national problem merely by advising the nation's educators in their planning efforts and by training teachers. Whether or not Harvard must ultimately choose such a role, the Administration in the meantime should stop the aimless drift toward expansion. It must face the dilemma squarely and calculate the price it may be forced to pay.

(This is the first of a series of editorials discussing the expansion problem at Harvard College. The Crimson invites mail on this subject from students, Faculty members, and others interested in the question.)