More Independent Study

Bruce Chalmers proposal that students be able to devise their own fields of concentration represents a healthy recognition that Harvard's undergraduate programs are not now as flexible as they should be.

Chalmers would allow students who have worked out a special program of study to take it to their Senior Tutor, who would see whether any department was willing to waive normal requirements and underwrite it. If not, Dean Ford could set up a Committee on Degrees to administer that student's unique program.

There is, of course, no reason why a program that a student wants to follow and that has academic merit should be disallowed simply because no department is particularly entranced by it. Students who are sufficiently convinced that their interests span the offerings of a number of departments should in fact be encouraged to draw up their own program of study. The student-authored programs might well be more coherent and better integrated than a program of courses selected simply to fulfill the requirements of a department.

The Chalmers plan, if adopted, would be one step towards giving students a feeling that their education is not strictly circumscribed by the language of the Course Catalogue. But Chalmers' suggestion would affect only a handful of students with well-developed interests. A more serious problem faced by many more students is the barriers to experimenting with interests they may have in unfamiliar areas. The pass-fail proposal--for which departments are now writing the rules--is one small step to meet the problem. It would allow students to take one course each year on a pass-fail basis--if the department or the instructor doesn't object.

The curbs that departments are now writing suggest that every effort will be made to see that the pass-fail option is exercised by students who wish to take an especially hard elective without the risk of receiving a bad grade. It remains to be seen whether the option provides much incentive. It could turn out that graduate schools and just about everyone else will come to think of a "pass" as simply a euphemism for a bad mark, and that students will be advised to stay away from courses that they don't feel capable of taking for a letter grade.

A more important proposal for providing more flexibility in the curriculum has so far received scant attention from the Committee on Educational Policy. It is the suggestion by the Harvard Policy Committee that the Independent Study Program be vastly expanded.

That idea would encourage more of what is best in the Harvard program--small groups of students working under the tutelage of a profesor, learning how he works by talking with him, learning on their own by doing research on what interest them. If a professor is sufficiently convinced that a student has the interest and ability to profit from an Independent Study with him, the University should have no objections.

The CEP should begin serious discussion of that idea as soon as possible. Of the proposals for increasing flexibility in the curriculum, the expansion of Independent Study holds the most promise. It would affect more students, and it is administratively the least cumbersome. Most important, it would encourage students to think about planning their own education and assure them that the University will allow them a maximum of freedom in doing so.