Study to Evaluate Working Student Life

Phillips Brooks House members who have launched an oral history project on the experiences of working-class students at Harvard are designing a pamphlet to be distributed to administrators and incoming working-class students next fall.

By taping a series of interviews with working-class students and recent graduates. Susan Cronin '84 and Gerald LeTendre '85 said this week they hope to shed some light on the problems such students encounter in Harvard's predominantly "professional or managerial" enviroment.

Topics in the study by PBH's Committee for Economic Change include the effect of a working-class background on social life and the amount of term-time employment that work-study students feel they can handle, Cronin said

"I'm really interested in the socialization of working-class students--do they hang around with others of the same background, does it matter, do people even know?" Cronin said. Former attempts to "document the experience" of working-class students have focused mostly on minorities, rather than a broad range of students, she added.

Besides advertising for student subjects, Cronin said, she has asked senior tutors and proctors to identify possible interviewees.

Cronin and LeTendre intend to interview some freshmen twice to see how their experiences evolve over time. Other prospective subjects have attended private schools, and one, after graduating from Harvard last June, has "gone back to" the work force to earn money for graduate school, Cronin said.

Calling the working-class background "sort of a different cultural experience," LeTendre said the recent squeeze in financial aid funds "might provide some input," though it will not be a major focus of the project.

One fruitful area of inquiry in the investigations, Cronin said, might be how much work-study students feel they can handle before it begins to interfere with their college experience. Though the committee has not formally arranged to forward the information to the admissions office, Cronin said, "Eventually I'd hope they'd take this into account."

L. Fred Jewett '57, dean of admissions and financial aid, spent last year exploring similar questions by meeting with students over meals.

Cronin said she hopes students will be receptive to the interviews because of their general informality. The interviewers themselves are working-class students and subjects "don't have to lobby for anything or support any policies." she said