Exiled Tutoring Schools Once Fought College For Control of Educating Students, but Lost

In the last decade, tutoring at Harvard, once a big, flourishing industry, has become a small, quiet monopoly.

From a small office on the top floor of Holyoke House, the Bureau of Study Counsel--with Administrative sanction and aid--virtually controls the tutoring business here. Nearly 1,300 students, 25 percent of the College, seek some sort of academic aid from the Bureau each year. Some 600 men use the "Remedial Reading Class," designed to increase efficiency in reading; three or four hundred use the counseling service, which helps the student solve problems in studying techniques; another three or four hundred use the tutoring service.

The percentage of students who use direct tutoring is small. The Bureau conducts this phase of its services in a quiet, efficient manner, and has capably handled, what was once a very disturbing thorn in the side of University Hall.

For two decades ago, tutoring at Harvard was a Big Business: a noisy, commercial, highly competitive industry that threatened to destroy the meaning of a Harvard diploma.

Originated in 1886 by William Whiting ("The Widow") Nolen '84, the tutoring business grew up rapidly. In the early 1930's, half a dozen cram bureaus vied for the Harvard trade from their quarters in the Square, dishing out a New Deal in educational methods. The genteel monopoly established by the Widow was transformed into a sharply competitive business whose practices were often quite unethical. A number of devices were used: ghost-writing papers, spotting or stealing exam questions, recommending "gut" courses, bribing monitors for class lists, hijacking lecture notes, and summarizing texts in violation of copyright laws.

The practice of extensive advertising also developed. In an article in the December, 1940, issue of the American Mercury, Irving Burton claimed that one school made an annual outlay of $10,000 for publicity purposes alone.

Wolff's Tutors advertised: "Diploma by Harvard--Tutoring by Wolff." The College Tutoring Bureaus claimed that it "has helped hundreds of Harvard students get better grades in their courses. We are now ready to serve you with our Notes, Outlines, and Liberal Translations." University Tutors made a different sort of appeal: "Midnight oil; loathesome toil." Another group advertised that "tutoring ....is not a crutch for the lasy or unintelligent bay, but a constructive educational technique."

Another practice in this decade of liberal education was the unique "Pay as You Pass" system, introduced by University Tutors. Although a "Gentleman's C" was practically guaranteed, the tutee paid on a sliding scale, with prices increasing as the grade improved.

In 1886, The Widow Nolan, a summa graduate, opened Manter Hall. Until his death in 1923, he maintained a quiet, unobjectionable tutoring business. His name and work developed into something of a legend, and it was not long before his successors at Manter Hall could advertise: "Ask Dad, ask Grand-Dad, about the Widow's."

Eventually the business grew to unnatural proportions, and late in the '30's the several schools grossed a combined profit of close to one quarter of a million dollars. Almost three-fourths of the College used the bureaus to some extent, and while the average expenditure of the student was small, some men spent over $300 a year, a few up to $1,000.

Verbal Stand

During the era in which the cram parlors flourished, the University took a strong verbal stand against them, but backed it up with little direct action. University Hall issued feeble protests and assumed a general air of helplessness and indifference for some time, while the "academic hijackers" were eating away at the vitals of the educational system.

It was left to four publishing firms to take the first step in crushing the schools. In 1933, Macmillan, Houghton Mifflin, Harper Brothers, and Ginn and Company sued the College Tutoring Bureau for abridging, printing, and selling copies of their textbooks. The Federal District Court awarded damages to the publishers, and issued a injunction restraining the Bureau from further use of these outlines.

Abraham Segel, proprietor of the College Tutors, said in defense of his company: "...our outlines have been prepared solely to be used as a supplement to the books prescribed in the course rather than as a substitute for them."

The next step was taken in 1935, this time by University Hall. Dean A. Chester Hanford had Manter Hall and the University Tutors legally enjoined from selling copies of lecture notes, on the grounds that lectures notes, on the grounds that lectures are the common-law property of the University.

Council Investigates

In 1936, the Student Council began an investigation into the tutoring industry. A four-man committee was appointed "to determine whether the tutoring schools have grown out of their natural proportions and whether any effort should be made to curb their activities." They found that an alarming 75 percent of the College frequented the parlors, and that the average student spent $20 a year for tutoring purposes.

The only action taken by University Hall after the Council publicized its findings was to prohibit scholarship holders from using the tutoring schools without official consent.

Finally, on April 18, 1939, the CRIMSON opened the attack that was to drive the cram parlors out of the Square. A banner headline announced:

"Crimson Inaugurates Campaign to Eliminate Tutoring Schools as an Organized Vice Racket Violating University Rulings and Ethics."

A front-page editorial slashed out: "Lined up on Massachusetts Avenue, grinning obscenely down over Harvard Yard, there is a row of Intellectual brothels....They are making a mockery of a Harvard education, a lie of a Harvard diploma."

To make its drive effective, the CRIMSON withdraw all advertising for tutoring schools. A week later, the Advocate cut off these advertisements, a source of twelve percent of its revenue shortly afterwards, the Guardian, a social sciences magazine, followed suit.

In May, 1939, the Administration prohibited men from selling lecture and reading notes which were to be employed by schools, and prohibited any students from using commercial tutoring without permission. Violation of either rule-meant expulsion. To provide a substitute for the cram parlors, the University created the Bureau of Study Counsel in September of that year.

Several professors threatened to take action against students whose examination papers contained "canned answers." Perry G.E. Miller, professor of American Literature, said in 1940 that his last English 7 exam had "wreaked havoc among crane parlor habit`uees."

Although the measures served to slightly decrease the business of commercial bureaus, they functioned effectively for another year. Then, in April, 1940, the publishing companies again took court action against the parlors.

The College Tutors, ignoring the injunction of 1933, had continued outlining and selling copyrighted books. Macmillan brought suit against the school, and two weeks later, confessing guilt, the College Tutors settled out of court. It's proprietors, Joseph H. Hurvits '21 and Abraham Segel, promised to close down the offices of the combined University Tutors and College Tutors, to destroy.

stencils of outlines, and to cease all activities in Cambridge.

Hurvitz resumed the law business in Boston that he had begun in 1935. In 1942, he moved to Washington in order to carry on government work.

Segel is now operating another business in Boston whose success depends largely on the patronage of Harvard students. When he settled with Macmillan, he reserved the right to "carry on elsewhere than in Cambridge a `legitimate' business in notes and outlines of non-copyrighted books."

Hy-Marx Now

He capitalized on this right and now publishes, from Boston instead of Cambridge, the Student Outline series--Hy-Marx. In 1948, a survey of Square best-sellers found that Segel's Student Outlines headed the list. A headline in the CRIMSON read: "`C'-Hungry Students Push Hy-Marx to Top of Student Best-Seller List."

William G. Perry, Jr., Director of the Bureau or Study Counsel, then referred to Hy-Marx as the "bibles of the get-by student." Segel attributed the boom to "high quality and usefulness. We capitalize on the exam-craze of these `get-by' students and give the `Gentlemen C' boys just what they want."

A number of University officials, questioned on the legality of the Hy-Marx editions, denied that they violated copyright laws, or the common-law copyright of lectures.

Segel continues to turn out his capsules of condensed knowledge and ship them across the Charles. At present, 103 titles are in print, most of which are handled by Phillips Brooks and the Coop. For an investment of $.75 to $3.00, the student can secure a bottled version of nearly any subject from History and Philosophy to Literature and Economics.

Shortly after Hurvitz and Segel closed their cram parlors, the publishing companies began proceeding against the Fairfax School for violation of copyright. With seven separate suits on his hands, filed by Macmillan, Harper, Holt, and others, Marcus Horblit '10 found it expedient to close his Fairfax bureau. Horblit, following Hurvitz and Segel, admitted to the illegality of his outlines, and agreed to destroy his notes and close down.

A class record states that Horblit, who died in 1944, "devoted his life to tutoring," particularly in the field of preparation for College Board exams. Before his death he published "Horblit's Key to College Entrance Examinations."

Two parlors remained, Wolff's and Parker-Cramer. University Hall dealt them the death blow on May 22, 1940. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences announced that any student using commercial tutoring would be liable to disciplinary action.

On the day that the ruling was issued, Harold A. Wolff '29 closed his office, and decided to become an "educational counselor--and adviser to students who have done their work, but who cannot grasp the course material."

Wolff had become something of a legend, like the Widow Nolen, a quarter of a century before him. A magna graduate in Anthropology, he employed 21 assistants in his high-pressure parlor and tutored up to 500 students.

Irving Burton, in the American Mercury, called Wolff ". . . a legend in himself. A bulky, six-foot, gangling, stoop-shouldered eccentric, he delights in walking about Cambridge with his pet chimpanzee and asserts that he can tutor anyone possessing the brain of his ape through college."

After he left Cambridge, Wolff worked for a short time with the Office of War Information. Now he is writing, and has contributed to Collier's, Coronet, Pageant, and New Republic.

New Career

In his class record, Wolff writes: "It is with mixed emotions that I report that Harvard is now free of prostitution--intellectual, I mean. In case you didn't know it, around University Hall they still remember '29 as the class that spawned the notorious keeper of Harvard's `intellectual whorehouse' . . . It took the war to get me out of the `Square', and to bring an end to my shameless battle for better instruction and better guidance facilities in the College. If anyone cares any more, I can report from the perspective of time and distance that Harvard is still far behind other schools in these areas. . . . In any case, quitting the battle of Harvard Square has meant starting a new career. . . . I find myself peddling a story to an editor who turned out to be Class of '45 and who has the power of bread and butter over my last manuscript."

After the University issued its edict a CRIMSON photographer learned that it had not driven all of the parlors out of business. He snapped a picture of seven students in an illegal cram session at Parker-Cramer and retreated with a tutor close behind him. When the picture was printed, Cramer filed suit against eleven editors for $55,000, on the grounds of trespass and libel. The case was settled out of court for $75.

The reign of the intellectual brothels ended when Parker-Cramer closed. Lester Cramer '30, a Phi Beta Kappa student, noted in his class record that he had "Abandoned tutoring before it abandoned me."

Tries Revival

But in 1948, behind a front called Cramer Research, Inc., located in a Boston office-building, Cramer attempted to repeat his Harvard Square success. He sent a letter to several final clubs at the College, stating that he was ready "to provide tutoring for hour, mid-year, and general examinations in the major liberal arts studies."

A CRIMSON editor, in response to this letter, began to take tutoring under Cramer along with hundreds of other Harvard students. His cancelled check was sufficient proof, and on January 15, 1948, the CRIMSON announced: "After taking an 8-year knockout count, Harvard's biggest bugaboo in recent years, the professional tutoring school, has begun its climb from the canvas."

Dean Bender responded to the article by branding the cram parlor as "a menace to decent education," and Cramer stopped his activities as an "instructor" for the second time.

Now Cramer is back in Cambridge, as Lester S. Cramer IL. The Law School Admissions Board, he said, accepted him with "full knowledge of my background."

The problem of the tutoring schools however, was not limited to Harvard. The American Mercury said that they "spread like cancerous tissue over American colleges." In the "subsidizing South, cram schools are required to maintain mastodonic football teams." Burton claimed that schools operated at Dartmouth, Brown, Columbia, Chicago University, several of the Big Ten schools, Stanford, U.S.C., and others.

But Time Magazine noted in 1936 that, "Although tutoring bureaus appear . . . on most sizable U.S. campuses, they are actually characteristic only of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, where studentsM-6LESTER CRAMER '30, now a first-year law student at Harvard, once head man of a noted tutoring school, attempted a post-war revival.