An Introduction

Most Harvard undergraduates will readily agree that their university is the best in the country; few, however, would describe their four years here as entirely satisfactory. To almost every undergraduate, a Harvard education presents inescapable problems: some solve them quickly and go on about their business, while others spend a large portion of their four years dissatisfied with the accepted methods of acquiring knowledge, and wondering where the education they have can best be put to use. It is with this situation that the 1961 Commencement Supplement is chiefly concerned.

Some of the following articles provide background and interpretation of various aspects of educational policy; others focus directly on the undergraduate's response to his education. Stephen Jencks analyses the difficulties that the University faces in formulating limited educational programs to remedy ill-defined undergraduate problems; Allan Katz describes students who commit what he calls "academic suicide"; and James Ullyot attempts to define the relationship between Harvard's athletes and the rest of the community.

Reading through this supplement, you will find that a number of related themes frequently recur. Byron Stookey's proposal for a lengthened period of education points up one of them quite vividly: "Do we believe," he asks, "that we all know, when we are 19, everything we want to learn? Do we believe that we all shall (later) find, in our careers and communities, and acquaintances, stimulus to intelligent self-education?"

If, as Stookey suggests, the undergraduate is unable to perceive a direct relationship between the specific period of his life set aside for education, and the career he will subsequently select, then the incentive for diligent and creative study must come from another source.

At first, that source would appear to be the University itself; its professors and libraries, the structure of its courses, should provide incentive enough for any man. Yet it does not. Craig Comstock seems to reflect a widespread attitude when he writes that "at a college so proud of its academic tradition, we hear little talk about courses except, that is, about exams, curves, and grades....Courses, by and large, are pursued in a social vacuum. It means nothing that students gather in a lecture hall, for they could as well stay in their rooms and watch the show on television."

A possible explanation for this malaise is suggested in Mary Ellen Gale's evaluation of Mrs. Mary Bunting's first year at Radcliffe, in Mark Krupnick's discussion of the relationship between a course and its students, and in Jencks' description of the problems of constructing educational policy around the undergraduate. One of Mrs. Bunting's first tasks at Radcliffe was to create "an atmosphere of expectation," a feeling among 'Cliffies that they are closely connected to the University and its faculty. Similarly, in Krupnick's view, most students are now estranged from their courses because of the virtual absence of productive dialogue between teacher and pupil.

Perhaps this situation is inevitable in a University of Harvard's size where, as Jencks points out, the Administration has no effective mechanism for gauging the success of its programs. But if it is unavoidable, then the number of cases which Katz has termed "academic suicide," along with those others which Comstock has called "academic abandon," is likely to increase. Although the student who commits "suicide" pursues a vastly different career from the one who has chosen a life of "abandon," the two reactions are produced by the same set of causes.

If you read Stookey's article, however, or Miss Gale's, or Krupnick's, you might begin to feel that the University can, in time, surmount these problems. For Stookey's article indicates the sort of long-range planning that can supplant the stop-gap measures popular at present; Krupnick's proposes a change in the administration of courses that could provide the undergraduate with greater insight into (and interest in) the process of education; and Miss Gale's shows that an administration can go a long way toward creating the essential "atmosphere of expectation."