Can't Get More? Work Less

This doesn't seem to be the year for graduate students. Faculty budget cut-backs promise a reduction in teaching fellows in some departments, probably later this year. Add to that a complaint that teaching fellows are receiving too little money for too much work, and you've got the basis for student complaints voiced at a symposium early this week.

Daniel Graber, a fourth-year graduate student in Philosophy, and a member of a six-member panel at the symposium, said Wednesday that salaries for teaching fellows at Harvard have not kept up with the rise in the cost of living.

His was only one in a medley of graduate student complaints which assert that teaching fellows are receiving inadequate funding this year.

Though general displeasure among graduate students has met with little response from the administration, the Committee on Undergraduate Education decided this week to make the distribution of teaching loads among teaching fellows, junior faculty, and senior faculty a discussion priority for meetings this semester.

At its meeting Thursday, the CUE suggested that the University might advisably spend less money on teaching fellows and more on junior faculty, who, they believe, might offer better instruction.

Karl Strauch, professor of Physics and a member of the committee, said the proposal was unsatisfactory, however, because much of a teaching fellow's education results from the instruction he provides.

The CUE decision came after a statement from Burton L. Dreben '49, dean of GSAS, who said that if students could not prepare adequately for classes without spending more than their paid time, they should work fewer hours. "It's your conscience, but I am not going to be able to pay you to do more work," he said.