Salzburg Instruction Level Held Above Undergraduates

Inability of college students to hold their own with European graduate members of the Salzburg Seminar was the determining factor in eliminating undergraduates from the summer study program, Gregory Smith, Seminar secretary, stated last night.

"There were no complaints about the Harvard undergraduates as students," Smith said. "They were as good as undergraduates could be, but they did not have the maturity that advanced study gives. Intellectually, they were behind the European students at the Seminar."

Qualified Men

Smith reported that the Salzburg Committee was sorry to cut undergraduates out of its program. One of the Seminar's purposes, however, is to present America to Europeans.

"To do this," he said, "we must send men who have as good or better knowledge of their field as the representatives from the other countries."

The Seminar will, in the future, select its Americans from graduate students already studying in Europe. This will allow them to choose representatives from colleges other than Harvard.

"Up till now," Smith said, "we did not have the funds to bring people from other colleges here for the extensive sifting interview process we have used for the Harvard representatives to Salzburg."

Not Enough Experience

Smith stated that the majority of the faculty, graduate students, and even some of the undergraduates who had been at Salzburg felt "American undergraduates are not in the position to bring the educational equipment equal to that of the European graduate students." This seemed especially true in philosophy and the experimental sciences, where the European members had been doing original research.

In a letter to the Crimson, Smith added that the Seminar still urgently needs money. The letter is on page two.

"We would like to present the Seminar to the Combined Charities as a propect standing on its own merits," Smith writes. Although it has grown away from a purely Harvard institution, he feels it should be supported as a worthy national project with strong University ties.