Committee on Faculty Problems To Have Report Ready in Spring

The seven-man committee President Pusey formed to study the problems of recruiting and retaining members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences will probably have a report ready this spring.

John T. Dunlop, David A. Wells Professor of Political Economy and chairman of the committee, said yesterday that the group is narrowing the scope of its investigation to a limited number of problems. But he declined to comment on what the committee might recommend "until we have the whole package ready."

Dean Ford said last week that the report will probably be divided into two parts--the first involving specific recommendations for Harvard and the second for the nation's higher educational institutions in general.

Ten universities polled by the committee devoted so much energy to answering the inquiries, Ford said, that he thinks Harvard has an obligation to make at least a part of the report relevant on a national scale.

Already the Committee of seven full professors has gathered a large amount of information by:

* Surveying all department chairmen on their experience recruiting and holding Faculty. Dunlop said he asked for long reports "telling us about every guy they tried to get and whether or not he came."

* Checking wages and benefits at 10 Universities comparable to Harvard--including Yale, Princeton, Chicago, Michigan, and California. The committee also asked each of these schools how they handle the kind of recruitment and retention problems Harvard faces.

* Sending a long questionnaire to all Faculty members. The results are being tabulated now on a computer and will soon be available to the committee.

* Interviewing department chairmen and a selected group of assistant professors.

* Meeting almost every week since April. In addition Dunlop has held meetings with a group of undergraduates and a group of teaching fellows.

The survey of other Universities showed Harvard's salary scale to be relatively homogenious Dunlop said. He explained that some of the schools have substantially "wider differentiations between fields and within the same rank."

None of the Universities surveyed have a system for alloting tenured appointments like Harvard's Gradustein formula--a plan devised in 1941 by a Harvard mathematician which (with modifications) determines how often each department can appoint a new senior faculty member.

Most of the other schools regulate the relative size of departments by budgetary allotment, a method which Dunlop said is "not much different in fact" from Harvard's system.

Dunlop added that his committee is carefully studying "the factors that influence the direction and rate of faculty growth."

Other members of the committee are Herschel C. Baker, professor of English; Merle Fainsod, Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor; Oscar Handlin, Charles Warren Professor of American History; George B. Kistiakowsky, Abbot and James Lawrence Professor of Chemistry; Edward S. Mason, Lamont University Professor, and J. C. Street, Professor of Physics.