The Administration: II

An easy way out of solving a complex problem in administration is to replace it unconsciously with a simpler problem that looks rather the same and has an automatic solution. The Administration has repeatedly fallen into this trap, reacting to difficult situations with responses unsuited to a sophisticated conception of the College.

The recent report on Advanced Standing stated that Sophomore Standing students earn higher grades than their compeers. The Administration accepted the report happily, without questioning its approach or the terms in which it evaluated the Program. But the Faculty had other questions, which deserve answers: What is the place of a three-year education in a four-year college? In what ways does the program predispose Harvard to pre-professional or professional training, rather than liberal education? In part, Harvard committed itself to Sophomore Standing in order to raise national standards of secondary education; how effectively does it and can it manipulate the Program to the advantage of its own courses, The Faculty raised these questions. The report ignored them. For the Administration, the statistical differences of grade point averages sufficed to prove the success of the Program.

The Harvard Student Agencies, from this point of view, are equally successful. They make lots of money and provide lots of student jobs: just count. The Administration has done that, and no more. It has not canvassed the side effects of HSA. HSA provides jobs: to whom? and with what equity in salaries? The HSA offers lucrative extracurricular activities: what ill effects does HSA have on the entire community of amateur undergraduate organizations? Tentative answers have been proposed for these questions, but the Administration troubles itself with neither questions nor answers: HSA books are in the black, and HSA is growing--that is enough.

When it does face a problem and try to use something besides a simple numerical scale in dealing with it, the Administration relapses into the subtlety of a yes-or-no choice. Asked why Paul Tillich had been forced to give final exams in Humanities 141d and Philosophy 193, President Pusey replied: "The Committee on Educational Policy doesn't like to make exceptions in special cases." In a University composed largely of special cases, inability to make exceptions means inability to make relevant decisions.

The Administration's approach yields things that look like solutions. The danger is that by producing responses, the Administration convinces itself that the problems have been met and solved, and that mechanical reactions are enough.