Student Porters, Priority System Crucial Links In Mushrooming Student Employment Program

In a little group of offices in Weld Hall a little group of men and women are engaged in running a $375,000 business--a business which may see the College out of one of its toughest financial spots in 316 years. The Bureau of Student Employment--which is what the offices comprise--last spring under-went an explosive change in personnel and a perceptable shift in policy, but is now clearly on the way to becoming one of the College's key agencies.

The reason for the importance of the Office is the continuing high cost of a Harvard education coupled with a decrease in scholarship money. In the past ten years the cost of going to Harvard has risen by 51 percent while income from scholarship endowment has gone up only 17 percent. Without some sort of financial aid a Harvard education has become virtually impossible for many student. Faced with the decline in scholarship money the College had a choice of two things--turning down students who could not pay their own way or finding new sources of financial aid. The College took the latter alternative, and student employment became a vital part in keeping Harvard a college for men of ability, not wealth.

In March 1950, creation of a Financial Aid Center to integrate scholarships, employment, and loans was announced. At its head was placed John U. Monro '34, assistant to the Provost and Counsellor for veterans. Monro was known around the University as a determined, efficient man who had had a good bit of experience in dealing with students financial problems.

It was Monro's job, as Provost Buck said at the time, to free our students from financial worries," mainly by setting up a body which could take care of monetary troubles in a number of ways.

Monro did not take long to go into action. It was he who provided most of the impetus for the precedent-breaking student porter plan (see below). And last spring John W. Holt was released as director of Student Employment and replaced by Graham R. Taylor '49 amidst rumors of policy clashes, especially about favoritism to athletes.

Holt Silent on Switch

Even now it is hard to tell exactly what was behind the switchover. Holt, at present working in New York at a higher salary for a personnel consultant firm, refuses to talk about what happened. Monro is also taciturn but declares that there was no question of policy involved. Except for the fact that Taylor, in his previous job as assistant to the director of admissions, had been quite busy in getting qualified athletes to come to Harvard, charges about policy battles seem unfounded.

Disagreements on matters other than top policy may have caused the split. Sources close to the office say that some University officials thought Holt was running the office in too informal a manner, and that, on the other hand, he was spending too much time on record-keeping. In any event, this year secretaries in the office are discouraged from eating on the job, and records of the amount earned on small jobs are no longer kept.

The general feeling among people who spend a lot of time around the Office is that this year it is working a great deal more closely with the Financial Aid Center than ever before. Cooperation between the two departments is at a new high.

This should not be very surprising, Graham Taylor is a product of post-war University thinking which links the problems of admissions and financial aid as inseparable. He has had experience "riding the circuit" through Western cities in an effort to get the fabled "All-Around Boy" and the sought-after "Scholar-Athlete" to come to Harvard. He has continued to do it this year, and there are those who say it takes too much of his time.

Student Security

Nevertheless, he has a good background in the spirit currently prevailing around University Hall. "We don't want to have to turn down any boy for admissions because he won't have enough money to pay his bills," he says. "We want boys to be able to come to Harvard secure in the knowledge that they will have well-paying jobs when they get here."

To achieve this goal the Office of Student Employment, mostly under pressure provided by the far-reaching Monro, has evolved the totally new student porter plan. Still in its experimental phase, the porter plan is now giving steady employment at 80 cents an hour for approximately 70 men. If successful, the porter scheme will enable the Office to give incoming freshmen assurance that they will get needed jobs.

"If successful" is a big if. Reports are constantly coming into Taylor's and Monro's offices from the dormitories where the plan is in operation. For the most part, all concerned emphasize, the students whose rooms are being cleaned by porters have made no more complaints than those who have maid service.

Alan H. Masters '52, a porter captain in Dunster House, says, "We're getting fewer complaints than we expected. One reason for this is the dally spot checks we make in various entries in the House. Most men realize the importance of the jobs we are providing and are quite considerate. Only two or three have what might be called an instinctive dislike of students cleaning their rooms."

The man in direct charge of the plan, Arthur D. Trottenberg '48, feels it is still to early to tell whether the porter system will work out. "Wait four or five months and then we'll be able to tell," he says. Most of the administrative officers connected with the plan say the same thing.

One thing seems pretty sure at the present. Unless the character of incoming freshman classes changes drastically, the porter system will not expand to other dormitories. As this is written Trottenberg and those helping him have just about enough man-power to take care of the three dormitories where the plan is now in operation--Dunster, Thayer Hall, and William James Hall. As Monro says, "Right now we've taken care of everyone who wants a job that will take about the same amount of time and pay about the same amount of money as a porter job."

One reason for this porter lack is the fact that, in another innovation this year, 80 or so students are doing part of the "dirty work" in the University's kitchens. As opposed to those who work in the serving lines, these men wash dishes, clean up, and scrub pots. They are paid 86 cents an hour and get the meals they work on deducted from their board bills.

Together, the porter and kitchen jobs this year have taken off much of the pressure to find steady jobs within the University that has always burdened the Employment Office. Taylor and Monro both point out, however, that despite their desire to get students into University jobs which were formerly held by outsiders, no maids or kitchen helpers have been fired. "We have simply not hired replacements for outside workers who retired or who went to work else-where," says Taylor.

Priority Jobs Rate High

Both the porter and kitchen positions fall into the category of "priority jobs," a system that was instituted experimentally last spring and with which Holt is believed to have disagreed. Monro and Taylor have divided all jobs into two kinds--priority and casual. Priority jobs are roughly defined as those inside and outside the University which will net a student more than $100 a year. Right now most of the 500 priority jobs (300 inside the University, 200 outside) pay between $250 and $400. Some (nightwatchmen and night switch-board operators especially) earn as much as $1000.

It is by means of these priority jobs that Monro and Taylor use student employment as a means of bridging the gap between a student's estimated expenses and resources during a school year. In this job classification a slight shift in emphasis has taken place this year, with financial need gaining over ability to do the job as a criterion for getting it.

The way the system works now is about the same as it was under Holt. A student who thinks he will need financial aid during the coming school year fills out a scholarship form listing his estimated expenses and resources for that year. In a typical case a student estimates that his expenses will be $1600, his resources from his family $1000. That leaves a difference--or as the Financial Aid men usually refer to it, a "gap"--of $600 which must be filled in if the student is to continue his education.

Each man's case is an individual one and is treated as such by the Financial Aid Committee. But the Committee has certain guiding principals which it always keeps in mind. As Monro says, "All our scholarship award thinking revolves around the fact that every scholarship we give regulates the amount a man will have to work. Thus when we give a big scholarship we know that the student will have to work less.

"Consequently we try to give scholarships which will force men to work commensurate with the work--both academic and extra-curricular--he is doing at college. In return, the Employment Office alerts us about people who work very hard at their jobs. This shows us not only that a man is conscientious, but that he needs the money. A guy like that will usually be well-treated by the scholarship board."

The record of the man with the $600 gap is carefully scanned by the scholarship committee during the summer. If he has been doing Group 1 work, he will probably have the whole sum made up with an outright grant, and will not have to worry about working.

Are Students Reliable?

In most cases, however, a grant of about $200 is awarded, still leaving a gap of $400. The student is then presented a choice of obtaining a loan, going to work, or doing a combination of the two. "Some men will take a loan of $200 and get a $200 job and others will decide to work for the full $400," Monro says. "The important thing about it is that we leave students a choice, as opposed to places like Yale which do things on a rigid standard based on a man's standing in his class."

In getting jobs for students inside the University the Employment Office has been faced with two big problems; faculty skepticism as to student reliability and possible overworking of men already burdened with studies.

Miss Gladys Fales, who is now in charge of priority jobs inside Harvard, has combatted the first problem by constant checking of students employed by University departments and also by reminding such men that a bad job means a poor recommendation for placement after graduation. She says now, "I think that most University departments have been convinced that they can hire students with the knowledge that they will do just as reliable a job as outsiders."

The second problem, that of how much a student at Harvard should spend working, is still being worked on by Monro and Taylor. Unlike some universities, Harvard has never considered working one's way through college a particularly desireable practice. The terms of National Scholarships expressly forbid their holders to have regular jobs. Harvard wants its men-to study first, and work only if absolutely necessary.

Happy Medium

Twelve to fifteen hours a week seems to be the perfect medium between letting a man slack off and allowing him to over-work. "Ten hours a week is a little light, 20 hours is too much," declares Taylor. Consequently this year the number of dining hall jobs for freshmen was doubled while the time each man worked was cut in half. "Before this year the freshmen were working 20 to 22 hours a week on these board jobs, and were having a lot of trouble with their studies," says Monro. "We halved the time each man would have to work and, at the same time, doubled the number of such jobs available."

Incoming freshmen provide one of the biggest worries for the Financial Aid Center and the Employment Office. Many men apply to Harvard with little or no idea of what financial reserves they can muster. Other men come here knowing perfectly well that unless something turns up they will be unable to pay their bills.

Each year on the average of 1500 men apply for freshman scholarships, and 270 of them get what they want. Two hundred men who apply for scholarships and don't get them come to Harvard anyway. Usually about 100 of them don't really need what they asked for, but the other 100 must get good steady jobs. It is in this respect that the priority plan is expected to prove its worth, for during the summer Taylor's office will write to the worst "need cases" and inform them about job opportunities. Theoretically no Harvard man will have to worry about term bills.

The 100 or so freshmen who discover that they don't really need much in the way of financial aid are indicative of a common type around the College Some men always turn up with terribly low estimated resources and ridiculously high estimated expenses. The result is a simply monstrous gap for the FAC to fill up. For a man like this, Monro remarks, "if he wants to spend that much it's okay, but he's not going to get it from me."

The priority system has resulted in a whole new method of Employmen Office filing cards. On these cards Taylor and his assistants put down the priority that the student should get so far as available jobs are concerned. Actual placement for a job is usually determined after Taylor interviews a man and decides on his needs and abilities. He is then turned over to Miss Fales for a job inside the University of to Mrs. Ryan for a job outside.

The "casual" jobs are awarded solely on the basis of ability of availability. They encompass such familiar pursuits as baby-sitting, handling odd-jobs around local homes, and shoveling snow. They take in such esoteric--comparatively highly paid--occupations as draftsmen, translators, and entertainers. The entertainment bureau, one of Holt's prides, has been rather curtailed under Taylor.

People who want Harvard men to come out and do some job call the Employment Office where Miss Ann McKenna tries to find students to fill the positions. Students registered in the casual job division--about 350--come in between classes to see what sort of jobs are in the offing. So for as casual jobs are concerned, the early bird usually catches the worm.

Criticism has been directed at the Office this year in that, while its more efficient operation saves time and money, the informality that used to prevail was a great inducement to coming into the office and seeing if any jobs were available. A ready supply of labor is an employment office's greatest asset. All indications are, however, that after a few more months Taylor and his staff will be sufficiently broken in to destroy the impersonal air that now lingers over the Office.

All this, however, is but a pebble on a beach compared to the crucial problem of financial aid. Of the $375,000 that was earned last year by men registered with the Office--College and Law School--$215,000 was term-time work, $160,000 summer. Undergraduates accounted for over $200,00 of this.

Budget High

The biggest single item on the Financial Aid budget last year was approximately $550,000 given out in undergraduate scholarships. Then came the $200,000 earned by College men through the Student Employment Office. (Many men who are not registered with the Office have jobs during the school year.) Lastly came $80,000 worth of loans.

Scholarship money is down, way down. Dean Bender and Director of Scholarships F. Skiddy von Stade, Jr. '38, are already considering ways of having former scholarship holders reimburse the University. Loans are limited because many students do not wish to take on long or short-term obligations. Administration officers look with eager eyes upon such schools as Princeton, where almost 40 percent of the students are regularly employed. There is a defininte possibility that employment money may some day equal the amount given out in scholarships. That is the goal for which Taylor, Munro, and Bender are striving. The success of failure of the porter plan, the kitchen help and the whole priority system will in a great part determine what the Harvard of 1960 will be like.