UNRESTRICTED FUNDS TO MAINTAIN HIGH STANDARDS IS PURPOSE OF HARVARD FUND

The recently organized Harvard Fund Council, through which the Senior class has arranged to accumulate the funds for its twenty-fifth anniversary gift to the University, has issued the following statement of the history, development, and purpose of the Fund. Mr. Thomas W. Lamont '92, President of the Harvard Alumni Association, in commenting on the newly formed organization said:

"The plan of the Harvard Fund to promote the habit among Harvard men of making annual return to the University of a part, even though small, of the great debt which they owe to it is thoroughly praiseworthy."

It is the will and desire of every Harvard man to do his utmost to insure the preservation of Harvard's leadership among American universities. Since the founding of the College in 1636, this leadership has been bound up inseparably with a tradition rich in the names of great teachers and illustrious graduates. From Dunster and Mather descends an unbroken line of famous professors down to Peirce, Longfellow, Gray, Norton, Shaler, Agassiz, Palmer, James, and Briggs. Graduates like Jonathan Trumbull, John Quincy Adams, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Joseph H. Choate, Phillips Brooks, Theodore Roosevelt, and others, have carried throughout the civilized world Harvard thought and Harvard ideals. In the community, in the State, and in the country, for nearly three hundred years Harvard has exerted a steady and growing influence for public good.

Cost of Leadership Is High

Many Harvard graduates are prone to take for granted that the Harvard given them by heritage will likewise persist in the future through some invisible power. That will depend upon Harvard men.

The cost of leadership today is high; and if Harvard is to lead, it must have the means to command the kind of men that have enabled it to lead in the past, and to continue a tradition of great teaching.

To help provide these means, the Harvard Fund was first considered in 1919. In 1923 the plan of the Harvard Fund was authorized jointly by the Harvard Alumni Association and the Associated Harvard Clubs. With the approval of the President and Fellows and the Board of Overseers, and with the appointment of the members of the Harvard Fund Council, the Fund has now been established.

The primary considerations governing the establishment and administration of the Harvard Fund are these:

1. That Harvard University needs a large increase of funds available for the current support, improvement, and, in some instances, the extension of its work.

2. That among the 44,000 alumni, there are a large number whose sense of obligation and loyalty will make them welcome a well-ordered plan whereby they may contribute annually an amount fixed by each contributor for himself for the use of the University.

3. That the amounts contributed should be a moderate, voluntary charge on the giver's current income and should bear such relation to his whole income as he should fix for himself.

4. That the money annually raised for the Harvard fund shall be paid into the Treasury of the University without restriction as to its use, and with entire freedom on the part of the Corporation to use the Fund as it may determine.

Physical Development on Increase

There can be no question about the University's pressing requirement for unrestricted funds. In every department money is needed for assistance and equipment, such as to obtain the maximum of productivity and the minimum of administrative work for the ablest teachers and investigators. This is the one vital need of the University. According as it is measurably met or not, the prestige of Harvard is maintained or lost.

Harvard, in common with many other American colleges and universities, is in the midst of a large building program. For actual volume added, its present physical growth has been approximated only twice before in the history of the University. During the period from 1924 to the close of 1926, a group of buildings--substantially 13 per cent, of its total number--will have been erected.

But buildings alone do not measure a university's strength. Mark Hopkin's proverbial log supplied the desk and chairs; it was the intellect involved that made the college. The efforts that are now being made to improve the methods of instruction in Harvard University, and to stimulate intellectual ambition in a large proportion of the undergraduates, are very costly, but the object is well worth the cost. When we ask how this is to be met, there is but one answer: unrestricted funds.

Unrestricted Funds Needed

Harvard must have unrestricted funds first to improve teachers' salaries, as Dean Moore has said, "all along the line." Harvard is again faced with the problem of underpayment and with a new moral deficit each year which is met only by the self-sacrifice and denial of the underpaid teacher. Harvard's staff of younger teachers is its great reserve. It must have at all times only the best men, regardless of the cost. The greatest emphasis must be placed on the quality of teaching and research. If this is clearly recognized, and the means are provided, Harvard's place is secure.

In 1882, when the Philosophy Department wanted Professor Josiah Royce to come to Harvard, there was no money available to bring him. So Professor Palmer, who was Chairman of the Department, took a sabbatical year and generously gave half of his own salary to pay that of Royce. In the following year William James took his sabbatical under the same conditions. And that was how the great Professor Royce was brought to Cambridge. The splendid teacher, the fine scholar, the able professor like Josiah Royce is hard to find. But Harvard must always seek to find him, and be prepared financially to attract him when it does. To do this, unrestricted money is needed.

Tutorial System Expensive

Likewise--and this is equally important--Harvard must not lose brilliant men who have elevated and strengthened its position in American education, but who may be made to feel that they can contribute as much or more to the advancement of mankind at other universities where salaries are better or where laboratory facilities are more modern and complete.

Most important of all, unrestricted funds are needed to carry on the work of the tutorial system begun in 1914 in the Division of History, Government and Economics. The tutorial system was made possible and necessary by the introduction of the general examinations. Tutorial instruction began with a staff of six tutors supervising the work of about one hundred. Within the last few years, however, the tutorial system has spread to most of the other departments in Harvard College. There are low ninety-three tutors, and the system is no longer regarded as a minor issue. It is a fixture.

Tutors advise students about their reading, discuss with them their subject as a whole and in relation to their courses and the books they have read, argue with them, stimulate them to independent thought in short, provide them with what might be termed intellectual companionship. A tutor's contact with a student extends not only beyond the special field into the general field of learning, but also beyond the intellectual level into the dimension of the human friendly relation. The tutor is closer to the student than any other member of the faculty. It is his business to be so.

For this reason alone the tutor must be not only the unusual type: he must be the very finest type of man, whose training should not be limited to Cambridge or even to this country, but should include study and observation abroad. The residential life of tutors in Cambridge should be reasonably comfortable and inviting, and all this costs money--more than the University now has.

Fund Is Perpetual

The Harvard Fund is intended to operate, not for any one day or generation, but for all time. It is entirely dissociated from any idea of a "campaign" or a "drive" and should have about it nothing that is either formidable or forbidding. Its sovereign importance is that it shall exist in perpetuity to receive annually whatever a graduate may care to give. The very idea of unrestricted funds precludes any suggestion of fixed amount: There is, and will be, no quota. If the number of men contributing is satisfactorily large, the aggregate amount contributed will undoubtedly be satisfactory also. The first consideration is that every man who can shall give something now.

Harvard's leadership must be insured. The Harvard Fund is ready to help insure it, and to divide the responsibility among 44,000 men.

It is for you alone to determine your share of this responsibility