Computers for All

LAST November Frederick Mosteller and his seven-man committee issued a modest proposal to fill a hole in undergraduate instruction, revitalizing house education at the same time. Each house should get a typewriter-sized computer console, Mosteller's committee recommended. It would be available from 8 to 12, seven nights a week, and students could dash downstairs to use the computer for physics problems or for homework in the new computer courses made possible by the new machinery.

An appealing idea, everyone agreed, but how much will it cost and who will pay? All the houses were cordial to the plan, but as one master said "we don't have the money to pay for them, and are hesitant to commit any money to maintenance when we have no idea how much that will be." The money would presumably come then from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences budget, and last week Mosteller put an approximate price tag on the console plan: $40,000 for a year's total expenses in all the houses.

Even if the money is found, the vision of computers in houses may be harder to administer than it sounds. The natural study cycle of Harvard students would probably create jam-ups at the single house console around exam time. The machinery is expensive and it is not clear just how closely the consoles would have to be watched. "I suppose the control would have to be self-policing," one administrator says, "but I'm a little dubious about how well that would work." Mosteller seems confident that the houses will be ingenious enough to get around these difficulties, and still prefers the house consoles to the alternate of collecting consoles in a single room.

The house consoles would have smallish memory banks and so could not be used for complex problems or substantial data-processing that goes with theses. So Mosteller's committee also recommended that the Faculty of Arts and Sciences set aside a fund to buy time on IBM 7094's for students who want to do more complicated computer work.

THIS recommendation nettles humanists who argue that the computer use is like a trip to Florence for a Fine Arts student or a visit to the archives in Washington by a government concentrator-a luxury which ought to come out of the student's pocket, not Faculty of Arts and Sciences funds. It could be argued that computers are becoming a necessity like libraries, but Mosteller prefers not to. "Argument by analogy usually gets one into trouble," he says, dismissing the question with a quiet smile.

The Mosteller report settles finally into a question of budgetary priorities, and in this inconspicuous conflict the professor of Statistical Mathematics has some strong cards: He can show that computers are widely used for thesis now--in Soc Rel, Economics, Statistics, Physics, and Chemistry--and the number of projects requiring computers goes up each year. Amazingly, 22 per cent of Harvard freshmen now enter the University with some kind of skill in using computers, and Mosteller argues "the skill dies very quickly if we don't supply them with computers, and right now we don't."

Though the Committee on Educational Policy has spent several of its meetings talking over the report, it will probably only vote routine statement calling Mosteller's report educationally sound. The decision, like so many here, rests on Dean Ford, who must decide in preparing the Faculty of Arts and Sciences budget for next year just how much, if any, of Mosteller's vision is going to be turned into reality.