GSAS to Register 2450 Today As Enrollment Drop Continues

The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) will register about 20 fewer new students today than it did a year ago, continuing a decade-long decline in enrollment, Richard A. Kraus, associate dean of the GSAS, said yesterday.

About 450 new students will register today compared with 470 last year, Kraus said. Total enrollment in the GSAS this year will be between 2400 and 2450, he added.

Scary Job Market

The GSAS has been deliberately cutting its size since 1973 because "there were too many students compared to the size of the faculty" and because of fears that the job market for GSAS graduates would shrink. Kraus said.

The gloomy job picture may continue for 20 to 25 years, and it has had some negative effects on morale among students, Kraus said. "It's a very human thing to think failure to find a job won't happen to you. But seeing it happen to others makes you wonder," he added.

Overmanned

The number of applicants to the GSAS also declined from 4450 last year to 4000 this year, Kraus said. Male applicants outnumbered females two-to-one, Kraus said, but added that the number of women applicants has been rising steadily for the past few years.

"There was a time when a lot of people looked at female applications and didn't take them seriously because they thought they would get married and waste their educations. That attitude has disappeared," Kraus said.

The Applied Sciences department will enroll the most new students, 33, Kraus said. Thirty new students will enroll in chemistry, 29 in economics and 24 in medical sciences. The Celtic Languages and Literatures department will enroll two new students, the fewest of any department, Kraus said.

Kraus said the tuition and fees for a GSAS student this year total $5500 and the estimate minimum budget including housing and food for one year adds $4800 to that sum. He added that 75 per cent of GSAS students receive some form of financial aid.

Returning GSAS students will also register today, the first time that new and continuing GSAS students have registered on the same day. "It's a matter of saving time, money and energy," Kraus said.

Good News

Continuing GSAS students working as teaching fellows and teaching assistants this year will attend an orientation session in the Science Center tomorrow. The session, sponsored by the Harvard-Danforth Center for Teaching and Learning, will focus on the role of teaching fellows at the University, Margaret L.M. Gullette '62, assistant director of the center, said yesterday.

President Bok established the Danforth Center in 1975 to improve the quality of education provided by teaching fellows.

More than 1000 GSAS students will serve as teaching assistants this year, Gullette said, adding she expects between 150 and 300 students to attend the orientation.

We Care

"We want to welcome them and make them feel like a part of the University and show them that Harvard cares about them and their teaching," Gullette said.

President Bok, Dean Rosovsky, and Dean K. Whitla, director of the Office of Instructional Research and Evaluation and of the Danforth Center, will speak at the orientation.