ECONOMY AND THE TUTORIAL SYSTEM

Out of a council meeting of the Economics department has omanated the idea that the tutorial system is a proper object for whittling by budgetary axes. That this idea is shared, and it is obviously shared, by high university officials is not inexplicable. With its vision beclouded by reverence for the course system, by the stirring arguments of those present whose sustenance depends upon that system, and by the timidly which abounds in an atmosphere of traditional conservatism, University Hall has seen fit to treat the tutorial system as altogether subordinate to the old order, to make it fill in the gaps, to reduce it to kind of an intellectual mustard plaster. Year after year, the president and the deans have obscured this subordination with fine phrases and high optimism. But concrete advances have been hesitant, almost apologetic. The fact of subordination remains, and when the time comes to eliminate or reduce budgetary items, the tutorial system springs to mind.

One is inclined to feel that any official sanction of this sort of economy would be a sad reflection on the intellectual courage of those who manage Harvard University. For the premises upon which the Tutorial system was originally founded leave no room for this notion of subordination. Those premises are essentially this; that the University had fostered too long the acquisition of knowledge for credit's sake, that ideally the University should encourage real intellectual interests. To date, the tutorial system has been a systematically discouraged attempt to attain the ideal. It has been hedged on every side by an old and tenacious order, by an unrepentant and deep rooted course system. And yet, even under these conditions, it has made large advances toward the ideal. That it has done so is a fact that points unequivocally to the conclusion that ought to have been, if indeed it was not, obvious from the beginning. The tutorial system must, if Harvard is to foster any real intellectual interest, become predominant. The course system must become subsidiary, it must become simply the undergraduate's medium of contact with the professor whose knowledge and personality command more of a following than can be adequately handled by individual conferences.

For a Harvard official to deny the premises cited above would be to indicate a certain dullness of perception. For him to gaze upon them and to deny their staring implication is, palpably enough, in the best style, but one is compelled to remark that it reflects no consuming courage. It will require courage to transport the course structure to its proper place in the academic system, to subordinate it to the tutorial establishment, to make its very existence dependent on the quality of its direction. It will mean treading on a great many well-polished toes. It is, admittedly, no task for an undecided executive. Perhaps it is too much to ask of one man. But Harvard has learned to expect great things of her presidents. She will expect him to recognize in this present instance a dangerous tendency, particularly dangerous since it attacks a youthful institution. She will expect him to take a decisive stand, and to explain his position clearly. She has not been trained to tolerate equivocation in crises.