CUE Proposes 3-Year Degree Plan

A report issued Monday by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education proposed sweeping reforms of university structure that would strongly support an as-yet unreleased report by Harvard's Committee on Undergraduate Education (CUE) on curriculum change.

The most striking recommendation urged by both groups is a shorter A.B. program, which would reduce the period of undergraduate education from four years to three.

Such a reform would provide "more effective utilization" both of the time a person devotes to education and the limited resources of financially hard-pressed schools, the Carnegie Commission reported.

The Commission is engaged in a five-year study of American higher education to be completed in June 1972.

Rick Tilden '71 and Steve Bowman '72, authors of the CUE report, said they were sure that the three year A.B. program is an "inevitable reform" in the University structure.

Under the CUE plan, "a student may graduate after three years by taking four term courses every term and an intensive study each January, giving him the necessary 27 term courses. The student may, however, choose to remain in the College for a fourth year or a portion thereof."

With from fifteen to twenty per cent of the students in the Colleges leaving a year earlier than they normally do now, more rooms and financial aid would be made available for women and other groups now under-represented in the student body.

Another recommendation in the CUE report, which will be published in the CRIMSON next week, would change the fall exam period to before Christmas vacation and abolish the College wide reading periods and institute the January study program.

The present policy of granting Advanced Standing to selected students would be terminated.

The plan would eliminate the General Education program for a much wider distribution requirement, and abolish compulsory expository writing.

A student would be allowed to take an unlimited number of pass/fail courses. All rank lists, honor distinctions, and deans lists would be eliminated.

The Carnegic Commission, which includes President Pusey and Dovid Riesman '31, Ford Professor of Social Sciences, said in its report that "education should become more a part of all of life and less all of a part of life."

The Commission report said that opportunities for higher education should be expanded and made available to persons, especially women and older citizens, throughout their lives.

It also urged that students be given more options to design their own college careers.

Other recommendations include eliminating one or two years of work from the Ph.D. and M.D. degrees and a revision of the preparation for all degree levels.

The Commission said that these reforms would save the educational institutions $3-$5 billion a year in operating expenditures by 1980.

"We should," the report concluded, "neither over-invest the time of students nor the resources of society in higher education."