ACADEMIC INEFFICIENCY

The academic machine is often a wasteful one and particularly so in the Freshman year when so much time and energy and creative impulse is lost in the transition from school to college. There will always be some momentum lost at the time but at Harvard and throughout the country generally there is far too much lost at present.

The only possible remedy for this situation is in closer cooperation between the school and the college. The problem can be attacked either from the school's point of view or that of the college, but without cooperation nothing is possible.

The problem is essentially one of adjustment, the capable and mature scholar must not be hampered and perhaps permanently discouraged by the petty regulations of the first two years at college designed to help and control those not yet ready for a college education. The capable student is handicapped both by the regulations which he can not avoid and often by his ignorance of what the University has to offer.

The obvious way to meet these difficulties at Harvard within the college itself is to revise the Freshman advisory system and to reorganize the tutorial system for the benefit of the advanced student. There is, however, a necessary preliminary step and that is to make arrangements allowing the advanced scholar in secondary school to continue his education in college without refracing his steps and without unnecessary deviations from the path he has chosen.

The college should be in close touch with a number of accredited schools both public and private and at their recommendation, checked possibly by special examinations or interviews, the college should exempt exceptional individuals from the common routine. Tentative experiments have been made in this direction by the college but they should be amplified and made permanent to provide recognized channels for the liberation of the mature individual from the unnecessary stupidity of the requirements designed for those not yet ready for educational privileges.