NO MORE HARVARD PLANNERS

Whatever reasons the University may or may not give for its failure to find sufficient funds for adequate instruction in the School of City Planning, the net result--abolition of the only existing professional school devoted to this subject -- is very greatly to be regretted. Such a school requires the broad background, provided by a large university with many different departments, to offer an adequate training for the work of the professional planner; to do efficient research work it must have both current and past knowledge readily available.

A specific problem in slum clearance, certainly not unlikely to confront a planner, almost inevitably becomes involved in the question of the economic practicality of such a project as well as in the difficulties of evaluating sociological, legal, medical, and engineering problems. To train men to fill positions demanding such decisions requires more than a course or two in laying out side streets and grass plots.

Harvard was in just such a position. Since 1909 it has been slowly building up the personnel, equipment, and organization which in 1929 crystallized in the present School of Regional Planning. No other professional school, for the training of men who expect to meet such problems, exists. With the destruction of the present institution, the fruit of this long period of labor will be largely dissipated.

The loss of this school to Harvard is doubly regrettable when it is considered that ever since the founding of the school, the demand for qualified men in this field has far exceeded the supply. An appreciable percentage of the students attending the Harvard school have been lured away by the offer of excellent jobs, before they had completed the requirements for a degree.

The Harvard Planning Library is said to be the best in the world and judging from the demand for more and more trained men which the school has been endeavoring to meet since 1929, the instruction offered has not been regarded as of a substantially lower quality.

That the present administration should see fit to let this Graduate School die in the face of such a demand for its product and in view of the unique opportunities Harvard has developed since 1909, even though it is admitted that prosperity is still sulking on the wrong side of the corner, is defensible only on the grounds of absolute inability to scrape up the necessary funds.