Dunlop Committee Asks Raises For Junior Faculty Members

The Committee on Recruitment and Retention of Faculty, chaired by Professor John T. Dunlop, has written the most significant report in three decades on the structure of the Harvard Faculty. The committee had been fomed essentially to find out what Harvard must do to get and keep younger Faculty members. The committee's answer: pay them more and upgrade their titles.

In a 119-page report released May 22, the seven-man committee recommended significant salary increases for all non-tenured Ph.D's here, even if this means hiring fewer of them. After showing that the older the professor, the less trouble Harvard has in getting or holding him, the committee recommended more flexibility in setting salaries for the youngest tenured professors (in their early thirties) and essentially no change in the salary scales of older professors.

The greater flexibility would allow Harvard to raise the salary of a young professor who had lucrative offers elsewhere and would leave without a raise. At present, Harvard salaries are rather rigidly limited according to the number of years of service.

The committee also recommended abolishing the title of Instructor, now the first position ordinarily held at Harvard by a Ph.D. The order of succession here is three years as Instructor, then five years as assistant professor, then either up to tenure as an associate professor or out. The report recommends instead a three-to-five year term as assistant professor followed by a three-year term as associate professor without tenure, followed by a tenure decision. Thus, all tenured men would have the title of professor.

This change is largely a semantic one, made necessary by the unwillingness of young potential Faculty to accept an instructorship at Harvard when they can get an assistant professorship anywhere else.

Recruiting and retaining faculty is more than a financial matter. The Dunlop Committee also deals with the problems of Faculty housing and schooling for Faculty children.

In a controversial section, the committee cites widespread dissatisfaction with Cambridge's public high school system (mainly Cambridge High and Latin), and suggests that Faculty members--whether or not they live in Cambridge--be allowed to borrow money from the University to pay for their children's private high school education, as they now may do only for college. This amounts, in effect, to University subsidization of private schooling. The report does not rule out University help to improve Cambridge's schools--but it implies that Cambridge hasn't shown much interest in getting such aid.

On housing, the committee recommended construction of a housing project for Faculty on a vacant 5 1/2 acre lot the University owns on Shady Hill.

Perhaps the mood of the report is more important than its recommendations: "For a half century," one chapter begins, "Harvard was believed by many to occupy a unique position in the American system of higher education; and that position no longer seems as secure as it once did."