TUTORIAL AND SCHOLARSHIPS

The Committee on Scholarships is confronted this year with the task of sifting and weighing the applications of some 750 men, most of whom, due to the depression, will be found to be deserving of aid. On the Committee's decisions the academic future of a considerable proportion of these applicants will depend; the method by which its decisions are made is clearly of prime importance.

Under the existing system applicants are judged primarily on a basis of the grades received for course work. In the case of those men who make the Dean's List and thus become eligible for awards, the recommendations of their tutors, based on the quality of their tutorial work, are given consideration along with sundry other qualifications, but admittedly are not taken too seriously. This system is clearly unfair to those men who spend a good deal of time on tutorial work to the exclusion of their courses. But more important than this is the powerful stimulus to neglect tutorial work which the system gives.

From an ideal standpoint it is clearly desirable that greater weight be given to tutorial work. The difficulty is the practical one of how to accomplish this. Each tutor, it is argued, is so prejudiced in favor of his own tutees that in many cases his remarks are about as reliable as the eyewash found in the ordinary business letter of recommendation. That this should be true is not surprising in view of the fact that at present all the tutor is asked for is in effect a letter of recommendation. The CRIMSON has suggested before in this and other connections that the tutor be required to make a detailed report to University Hall on each of his tutees. If this were done and if it were announced that great weight would be attached to it, the standards of honesty among the tutorial staff would be pretty low if fairly satisfactory results were not obtained. Such a system would admittedly be open to favoritism, but until this or more drastic measures are taken the awarding of scholarships will contain a large amount of guess-work.