The College: A Megalopolis of IBM Machines?

Yesterday, the CRIMSON published the the views on expansion of Seymour E. Harris '20, Chairman of the Department of Economics. The following is the second statement from a faculty member on the subject, that of Wilbur J. Bender '27, Dean of Admissions. Because of space limitations, about one-third of Dean Bender's text has been deleted, as indicated.

We can agree, I think, that there is nothing sacred about the present size of the College and that there is no one perfect or right number for Harvard. There is, no doubt, an optimum size, within reasonably narrow limits, for any college, the size being the number of students which, given an institution's particular resources, circumstances and function, it can educate with maximum effectiveness. I believe that, in these terms, our present enrollment is about five hundred too large, but I realize that this is subjective, unscientific judgment and I accept the fact that under pressure we are bound to depart somewhat from the ideal. And of course the optimum size will change as resources and circumstances change.

No Provincial Spirit

We can agree, also, that we must not approach the difficult national problem of greatly increased numbers wanting higher education in the next generation in any narrow, provincial or selfish spirit. We have a profound concern as citizens and as members of a university community with the kind of education the coming generation will have, and we have an obligation to the nation and to Harvard to do our full duty. But what is our duty? Here Harvard men will disagree, as usual.

On the face of it the answer is simple. With a big increase in the number of college candidates, and presumably a corresponding increase in the number of qualified candidates wanting to attend Harvard, we should expand, although no one yet argues that we should double in size, which we would have to do in order to keep pace with the increase, and obviously any conceivable increase in our enrollment would take care of only an infinitesimal part of the estimated two and one half million more students who will, it is predicted, be in college in 1970. The report of the Visiting Committee of the Board of Overseers is silent on how much bigger it wants Harvard to be, but it does mention a Freshman class "of say 1,500" which would mean an increase of 25-30 percent, or 1,000--1,400 over-all.

There can be only sentimental objections to increasing the size of the College in face of the great national need provided we can come reasonably close to doing Harvard's particular job effectively with increased numbers. The problem really boils down, then, to these questions: what is Harvard's special function in the national educational picture? what specifically would be required in the way of resources and arrangements to perform this function with reasonable adequacy if we have x number of additional students? and can the necessary additional resources be obtained? There is a further general policy question: will our national educational needs be best met by enlarging the already large institutions or by a decentralized development?

More Candidates for Miss Radcliffe?

In considering these questions it must not be forgotten that the College faculty teaches five groups of students: Harvard undergraduates, Radcliffe undergraduates, Radcliffe and Harvard graduate students and Graduate School of Public Administration students. (It also has some peripheral responsibilities for students in the graduate schools of Education, Divinity and Design.) Are all these categories going to expand and if so how much and what will that mean in terms of increased burdens on faculty and resources? If not all expand, which ones should grow at the expense of which others? Can we think of the College problem without considering the competing needs of the other groups? In view of the shortage of college teachers, which will be the critical bottleneck in the national expansion of higher education, and in view of the importance of the Harvard Graduate School in training college teachers, a stronge case can be made for expanding the Graduate School instead of the College. [Ed.--See Professor Harris' Friday statement]. Yet it has been said that it requires about three times as much in university facilities and in faculty time and energy to educate a graduate student as it does to educate an undergraduate. . . And what about Radcliffe, a small college where the pressure for admission is already, apparently, greater than it is at Harvard?

It may be helpful to take a little closer look at the numbers. We have all been somewhat bemused by the staggering figures about future college enrollments which are tossed around so freely and we tend to apply these statistics ever-simply to the consideration of Harvard's problems. National and local developments will not necessarily be identical in scope, however.

It seems clear that nationally in the next fifteen years there will be a large increase in the number of college students. Just how big the increase will be is, however, uncertain. College enrollments will be effected by a number of more or less unpredictable factors: business conditions, draft and man power policies, social and economic pressures, the cost of higher education, scholarship opportunities, the difficulty of securing admission to college, etc. . . The increase may be much more than is generally predicted, or it may be much less, depending. But even if the common estimates of a doubling of the number of college students nationally by 1970 are accepted, it does not follow that all colleges will be affected equally by the increase in the number of candidates, or in particular that Harvard will.

A considerable part of the estimated increase is the result not just of the rise in the birth rate and therefore of the total size of the college age group but of a projected increase in the proportion of the age group going to college. We have been moving pretty steadily from about four percent of the age group in college in 1900 to about 25-30 percent now. Quite possibly the proportion will go up to 40-50 per cent eventually. This will mean a lowering of the average level of academic ability of the college population.

The level of academic ability of the Harvard population, however, has been going up. The median Scholastic Aptitude Test verbal score of the entering class has gone up in the last four years from 582 to 632 and it will probably go up still further, but not much, I hope. The median Scholastic Aptitude Test mathematical score this year is 638.

The Cream of the Tidal Wave

It is not generally understood even at Harvard, and I mention it with some trepidation, that the average Harvard student is in the top 3-4 percent, academic-ability-wise, of his age group. Yet it is a fact of central importance for Harvard's problem that almost the entire Harvard student body is in the top 10 percent in terms of academic ability, of the national college-age population, and the great majority of Harvard students is in the top 5 per cent.

In other words, 90-95 percent of the "tidal wave" of college candidates is not part of the potential Harvard clientele. What happens to them is important, but they are not our particular problem. . .

Of course no one can say with certainty how many students will want to come to Harvard fifteen years from now, but I would be surprised if we had then more than 5,000 bona fide first choice candidates with academic ability and personal qualities of the sort we were really interested in. Harvard's concern, as said, is with the top 5 per cent, which will mean probably about 200,000 students of the 18 year old group by the end of the 1960's. Of these more than half will be either girls or interested primarily in technical or vocational education or will not go to college so that the potential Harvard national clientele will be about 75,000. In view of the scores of other good colleges in the country it seems unlikely that more than 5,000 will want Harvard. Five thousand would be considerably more than twice our present number of candidates of this sort. We would no doubt have many more applications filed, however, because of the multiple application practice, perhaps as many as 10-15,000.

Clearly we would be forced to deny admission to hundreds of able boys (we shall have to do this in any case, even if we double the size of the College) but I am sure that none of the rejected candidates whom we would really like to be able to take would fall to secure admission to some other respectable college. Rejection by Harvard would not mean denial of educational opportunity to them.

Selection, not Snobbery

Five thousand may turn out to be too big or too small, but it seems to me a reasonable if generous estimate of the number of bona fide first-choice candidates of top quality we would be likely to get at the peak of the tidal wave. I emphasize it because I feel that the astronomical figures of total college enrollment which have been used so loosely have obscured the scope and nature of Harvard's problem and it is desirable to try to define as concretely as possible the magnitude of the pressure we will face. . .

Harvard is not being superior or looking down its nose at others when it defines its special role as giving the most challenging, stretching and enriching education it can to a limited number of academically highly able students. This is what we are peculiarly fitted to do, and it is important for the nation that it be done well, that the men in this group, who are going to be the future scholars, scientists, teachers, government officials, top professional men and managers, get the kind of education they need and we can give them. Our job is to give them the best possible education for the special service they will give to society later. We are not competent to do what a Junior College, for instance, can do. And the great majority of the college students of the future will not want what Harvard has to offer and would be confused and frustrated by it. . .

An Easier Teaching Job

Harvard's job was a lot simpler in some ways in the old days when the gentleman 'C' student, here for four pleasant years, was so common a type. In the Twenties, when the number on the Dean's List averaged under 20 per cent, the faculty could, if it wished, ignore a large proportion of its students. Now we find last year's Freshman class with 40 per cent on the Dean's List and we are approaching the time when 50 per cent of the College will be on the Dean's List and 60-70 per cent will be honors candidates. How will we respond to the challenge of a student body of this quality? It is one of the anomalies of Harvard history that it was in Mr. Lowell's presidency, when the student body was much less able and academically highly motivated than now, that the vigorous and imaginative efforts were made to provide a challenging, individualized education for all students through the development of tu- torial instruction, general examinations and the Houses, whereas now we are contemplating expansion which, in my view, would almost certainly move us in the opposite direction. This is, of course, the heart of the problem, and if it can be proved that we can expand and still give a student body of the quality of ours the quality of education it deserves, then the argument is over.

Basic to the question of quality of education is the faculty. One of the weakest spots in Harvard education today in the high proportion of undergraduate teaching done by Teaching Follows. I am not indicting Teaching Follows as a group. Some of them are doing a first rate job and all are gaining useful experience. But they are very uneven in quality, they got little help or supervision from their seniors and they are, by definition, inexperienced. We must face the fact that our heavy reliance on them means a watering down of the quality of Harvard instruction. Yet largely because of the expansion in size over the pre-war College which has already occurred we are using them much more extensively than before. Table 7 in the Notes on Harvard College offers illuminating evidence on this. If we add a thousand or more undergraduates we shall inevitably have to use Teaching Fellows even more extensively, with a further decline in the quality of instruction.

A Seller's Market

But in the years ahead it will almost certainly be impossible to maintain even the present uneven quality of Teaching Fellows. In the next fifteen years there will be a terrific shortage of college teachers. It will be a seller's market for them and anyone who meets even the minimum qualifications for teaching at Harvard will have better offers elsewhere. Just as serious, for the same reason it will be far more difficult than at present to keep the best and most experienced of our junior faculty, the Instructors and Assistant Professors. Who then will staff our Sections and provide tutorial instruction and man the Houses and teach elementary language courses and General Education A?

It is possible that adequate teachers, of Harvard quality, can be found but it will be expensive. Which raises the important question of how much expansion would cost and where the money would come from. First, however, we must face realistically the question of how much is needed just to maintain Harvard quality for the present sized Harvard.

The unhappy fact is that whereas the expansion in size of the College which took place under President Lowell was accompanied by a tremendous building program and by a large expansion in endowment in a period of a reasonably stable dollar, there has been very little building to accompany the expansion in numbers since the early 1930's and while the endowment has grown inflation has cut its value. There are therefore, great arrearages to make up if we are to do a first rate job with a student body of 4,400. This fact is illustrated dramatically by our present housing situation. . .

Even Athletics Need Money

Before we do any expanding we need money to build two Houses and more Freshman dormitories. We need housing for married students and younger faculty. We need a new infirmary and medical building, a theatre, more chemistry laboratories, more office space for administration and faculty. More important, we need to raise faculty salaries at least 25 per cent if our teachers are to reach pre-war levels of compensation or to lesson the compensation gap between academic and other professions. Every department has more or less pressing needs which require new endowment. The recent report on the behavioral sciences at Harvard describes some of the urgent needs in that areas. We need new endowment for athletic program, which used to pay its way and now costs over half a million a year, for the library, for the Fogg, for tutorial instruction and advising, for scholarships, for the Houses.

In other words, we need, conservatively, something between fifty and seventy-five million dollars for new buildings and new endowment just to do our present job properly. Remember that with inflation the endowment dollar has steadily lost in real value and that the percentage of the cost of a Harvard education paid for by the student instead of by endowment income has steadily increased. We are relatively considerably poorer than we were thirty years ago and there is, I believe, a significant relationship in the long haul between the quality of education and real per captia endowment income. Adding more students without increasing endowment proportionately would, of course, lesson still further the percapita endowment. It would be possible, by increasing the tuition charge to $2,000 a year, or thereabouts, to make up for shrinking endowment values. This would mean a college made up of the very bright, on scholarships, and the very rich. If there are enough of the very rich who want Harvard, say 75 per cent of the enrollment, this is one possible solution.

Another Lamont? Where?

If we expand by 25 per cent do we increase the faculty, including full professors, by 25 per cent, and if so, how much will this cost with $400,000 now required to endow a chair? How much more scholarship endowment will be needed to maintain the present ratio of scholarship holders? At least two more Houses would be needed, at $5,000,000 a piece or more. Where do we put all these now Houses? Lamont is jammed now. Do we build another Lamont, and if so where do we put it? Do we build a second Indoor Athletics Building, and where would it be located? Where do we find additional playing fields and tennis courts for 1,000 more students if we are to maintain our athletics-for-all program? How much more laboratory and classroom space, how many more lecture halls holding 500-1,000 will have to be provided and where will the new buildings be placed? And what is the city of Cambridge going to say? The Yard isn't going to get any bigger, although there is, admittedly still some vacant space in front of University Hall, and we are hemmed in on all sides by the city.

We could easily spend another $25,000,000 or more to take care of the basic needs for an expansion of this dimension. Perhaps this amount, plus the sums needed before we do anything about expansion, can be found, but nothing in the experience of the last ten years indicates that it can be. . .

1,000 More in the Square

There are, finally, the intangible, the subjective factors to which each one will respond according to his lights, his prejudices and his glands. How big is big enough? The same arguments for adding 1,000 now can be used with equal force for adding another 1,000 and then another and another. Where do we stop? Somewhere I trust. But after all there will be two and a half million more students in college by 1970 they say and the pressure to expand will be continuous.

We have already added 1,200 students since the early 1930's, plus 200 at Radcliffe (and all the Radcliffe students are now in the Yard) plus the graduate school increases. How much more noise, crowding and confusion can we stand without destroying all possibility of serenity, gentleness, the contemplative life and simple human relationships? Can one be anything but appalled by the thought of adding 1,000 more undergraduates to the chaos that is Harvard Square now, 1,000 undergraduates plus x numbers of additional Radcliffe and graduate and law and business and divinity and education and design students? What will further expansion do to the whole tone and quality of Harvard life? Pressure, impersonality, bureaucracy, mass-production and big business methods, all will eventually expand, with obvious effects on intellectual life and the development of the individual student. The bigger we get, beyond a certain size, the more we lose the sense of the whole, the more we retreat into our specialties, our departmentalizes, our little personal refuges, the harder it is to maintain any sense of unity, of follow ship, of community, the more difficult it will be for the single human being in his full individuality, the Harvard man, old-style, to count. We turn things over to the IBM machines and the formulas.

Decentralized Solution

I make this point not alone for Harvard. I am against megalopolis and gigantism everywhere in education. After a point, size is the enemy of quality, mass is the enemy of the individual, complexity is the enemy of humanity. I do not share the common American belief that bigger is better, that one cannot be "dynamic" without forever expanding in numbers, that it is un-American not to get always larger. I do not believe that Harvard's contribution can be measured quantitatively, and I do believe that quantity can destroy something very precious for Harvard.

Industry has learned that there is a law of diminishing returns operating against the expansion of individual units beyond a size where management can function effectively and the worker feels some identification with his job. Decentralization is the current pattern of economic development. I suggest that America and education and the individual student and teacher will be better served if the educational expansion which must take place in the next generation is also decentralized. We will be in a far healthier condition in all kinds of ways if there is a multiplication of community colleges, and a limited expansion of the smaller and presently less fully utilized colleges rather than a concentration of 50,000 students in state university x, or 5,500 at Harvard