ANOTHER ASPECT

Ever since the inauguration of the tutorial system, its position in the educational role at Harvard has remained anomalous. Though it has become increasingly the focus of educational opportunity, there has been no official recognition of its academic existence save in reports on its functioning, nor is there any method of determining its real efficacy in the educational scheme save by the indirect method of divisional results. The University has shown a hesitation in making tutorial work paramount compared to course work which has resulted in a general impression of not knowing just how to grapple with the problems imposed by its not-so-new offspring.

For those who still apparently need to be convinced of the paramount value of tutorial work compared to course work, and accurate gauge of the former could be devised which should convince the most reactionary of the secondary value of the latter. By exempting a limited number of volunteer students from formal course instruction in their fields, and allowing them to attend only such lectures as they saw fit, a truer estimate of tutorial work could be obtained than is now possible with course requirements uppermost in the minds of both students and authorities. Unhampered by routine course work and time-consuming classes, these students could then devote themselves to getting the most from their tutorial instruction.

A similar plan has already proven its worth at the University of Chicago where any student can prepare himself for comprehensive examinations in any particular course according to his own methods; both better grades and fewer failures among those electing to do so have resulted. At Harvard, with the tutorial system, the results should be still more marked, and the data of experience thereby gained should prove invaluable in effecting the ultimate transition from emphasis on course grades to tutorial work that is conceded to be the logical goal of the system.