Now, Live From D.C., Here's Derek

[President Bok's comments are excerpted from his responses to questions Sunday on the National Broadcasting Corporation's "Meet The Press."]

Lawrence E. Spivak '21 [NBC news]: Why is Harvard dissatisfied with its current undergraduate curriculum?

President Bok: I think that over the last 25 years in most educational institutions there's been enormous increase in the volume of knowledge, the degree of specialization, the size of faculties. The courses have proliferated, new fields of study have been opened up, and we're now entering a period of consolidation where we have to step back and look at what has occurred and try to redefine our purposes and the objectives of a liberal arts education and provide a structure in our curriculum that will emphasize the most important portions and aspects of undergraduate education, so that our purposes become contemporary and clear to our students and to all of us...

Spivak: In his recent report, Dean Rosovsky said that Harvard's recruitment and selection procedures are designed to yield a group of undergraduates as able and talented in varied ways as a nation can produce. Why should a great university in a democracy seek only to educate the ablest and the most talented in the nation?

Bok: I think it's very important to emphasize that there are many, many different educational institutions in what we call higher education and they educate an enormous diversity of students. I think all of those institutions have to define particular roles for themselves; they can't do everything at once.

With the kind of faculty and facilities we have--an enormous library, a faculty composed of professors who are selected and have long been selected because they are masters in their particular field of knowledge--we feel that the best students for our institution are those students of very high intellectual ability, but also students with a range of particular talents, of great diversity, because we know that students are going to learn as much from each other as they will from the faculty and from examinations and papers. And if we can put together a student body of widely diverse backgrounds and talents, they will have a richer educational experience learning from each other than they would otherwise.

Edward B. Fiske [New York Times]: On the one hand you say that what with inflation your costs are now somewhere up near the ozone level and that in order to continue to do your job well you're simply going to have to have increased access to federal funds. And on the other hand, you seem to complain that the federal government especially is meddling in your affairs, creating unnecessary paperwork, in some cases affecting admissions policies and so forth. Aren't you trying to have your cake and eat it too?

Bok: No, I don't think so. I think everyone in my position recognizes that even apart from federal funds, universities, like other institutions, have to be subject to federal regulation where it's necessary to protect the public interest. I think we would also recognize that most of the problems that have given rise to federal intervention over the last ten years are legitimate problems. Our concern is much more with the manner in which the federal regulations have been conceived and implemented. We're concerned about the conflicts and ambiguities in many of the regulations that confront us, with the enormous and in some cases unnecessary volume of paperwork that these regulations entail... So we would simply like to see regulatory process improved and the burdens of administration lightened.

But having said that, I'd like to emphasize one thing, and that is that the universities themselves bear a responsibility for many of the problems of federal regulation that they've encountered. You can't expect the quality of federal regulation to be any better than the quality of advice that is given by those who are subject to it, and universities have not, until recent years, paid much attention to try to give not last-minute efforts to ward off regulation, but much earlier, more constructive efforts using their intellectual resources to help the government address important national issues effectively, but in a way that does no needless damage to the health and vitality of universities.

Fiske: But the debate doesn't seem to be over effective regulation. The debate seems to be over intrusion. For instance the new legislation regarding medical schools, requiring colleges to accept graduates, Americans who go abroad to study and then come back.

Bok: Well let me speak to that because that is a good example of what I had in mind. What the Congress did recently was to pass a provision which is vague but may be interpreted to mean that the Secretary of HEW [Health, Education and Welfare] can assign to particular medical schools students who've completed part of their medical training abroad.

We think that's unwise not just from our standpoint but from the government and the public standpoint as well, for two reasons. The first reason is that we feel that the process of putting together an effective class in our nation's medical schools, of making fair decisions about who will be admitted and who will not, are decisions that are better made by the admissions officers in universities than by government decree, by officials who lack the familiarity with the particular needs and problems and opportunities at our institutions. The second problem is that that particular provision was inserted in conference, without any opportunity for universities, medical schools or any other interested parties to present their views and arguments to be considered before the measure was enacted... It is simply a much larger question of how we develop a regulatory process that is most likely to protect the public interest by giving decisions to those who are most competent to make them.

Bill Monroe [NBC]: Mr. Bok, the California Supreme Court, by a 6-1 decision, recently threw out a policy of the University of California that gave preference to minority students in admission to a medical school. Won't this decision affect the affirmative action program of almost every college and university in the country?

Bok: Yes, it may not apply directly to private institutions, but they're sure to be influenced by it, and for that reason and others I am strongly opposed to that decision...

Monroe: Can you be fair to majority students while giving preference to minority students?

Bok: ...though grades and test scores are certainly relevant and helpful in trying to decide which students are capable of doing good academic work, they are by no means the only factor that can enter in a sound admissions decision. They don't tell you very much about what students will do after they graduate. We're interested in educating students who will make a distinct contribution, and in a country where there are so few minority persons in leading businesses, law firms, hospitals, government agencies, we feel that a well-trained minority student may make a distinctive contribution, especially in a country which suffers from the racial tensions that we've experienced.

Another consideration lies in trying to put together a class... in which there's a real diversity because students learn as much from each other as they do from the professors, the tests and the papers...

... for a court to say that race is of no relevance is unwise, first for the reasons I've indicated, but there's another, deeper reason. Even if one disagrees with the points I've made, I hope we would all agree that this is a difficult question, reasonable people can differ about how minority students should be treated in the admissions process. For that reason it's very, very important that these decisions be made through experimentation, through trial and error, by the admissions officers who are really experienced in the process of trying to put together a good class to create a good educational experience. It would be most unwise to take up a question where there are differences of opinion of this kind and subject it to a uniform, rigid rule in all institutions, imposed by judges who, good as they are, do not have intimate, first-hand knowledge in the nuances and subtleties of the admissions process.

Monroe: If you take a, pick out a student give him preference because he is a member of a racial minority, would you be willing to call that reverse discrimination?

Bok: ...We can attack anything by attaching labels, but I don't think labels really get at the subtler process of how we admit students in ways that will enhance our contribution and the educational experience students undergo.

Fiske: During the 1960s Harvard... made commitments to minority education. In the last few years, however, these gains seem to be eroding. At Harvard, for instance, in virtually every department, the number of blacks peaked somewhere from '72 to '74 and is now declining. Wouldn't this suggest that that commitment itself has weakened?

Bok: No, I don't think that is true. In the first place I would dispute your figures.

Fiske: Well, they came from your staff.

Bok: Oh, but I would take you faculty by faculty and indicate that there's been no little significant drop-off in a number of schools, there's been more of a drop-off in others. There are a number of reasons for that. It's not a lack of commitment... For example, there are many other institutions which are now competing heavily for able minority students so that it is only natural that in some places we're having more difficulty.

In addition... one has to weigh some of the factors that lead me to put some emphasis on race in the admissions process with a number of other factors. And one's weighing of those may change over time with greater experience. But we, at this point in the College, for example, number about one-third of all the black students in the country with board scores over 700 and about 15 per cent of all the black students with college board scores over 600. Now you couldn't achieve that without a very intensive effort. And I don't see any weakening of that effort by any means.