Gardner Decries Lack of Leaders

John W. Gardner, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, warned in an essay published yesterday that colleges are rendering students incapable of becoming responsible leaders.

"The academic world appears to be approaching a point at which everyone will want to educate the technical expert who advises the leader . . . but no one will want to educate the leader himself" Gardner wrote in an essay for the Carnegie Corporation.

Dean Monro said last night that Gardner's comments were "useful generalizations." But he said, "I think that society depends on colleges and universities to develop a lot of its leadership, and we do our best here."

He added that businessmen's complaints that colleges send people to protected jobs are not very realistic. "Graduates do indeed assume positions of great leadership," he said, "and become socially responsible."

Paul M. Doty, professor of Chemistry, who earlier this year headed the Faculty committee which studied the General Education program, said he believes that the program is capable of developing the type of socially responsible leader Gardner seeks.

"Gardner's statements are certainly not true of Harvard College," said Rustin C. McIntosh '55, Allston Burr Senior Tutor in Dunster House. "On the graduate level, though," he added, "students begin to lose the confidence to assume leadership as they specialize more and more."