Pusey's Initial Report as President Reviews University After 25 Years

This fall an old grad came back to Cambridge and the college he left 25 years ago. He had been back before, but this time he was here on business--the business of running Harvard University. Before he could get down to the routine of administration and the challenge of innovation, however, the alumnus had to take a new look at the Harvard of 1953 to see how it differed from the Harvard of 1929.

Last week President Pusey made known the results of his new look around in his first annual report to the Board of Overscers. The report, which covers the the academic year 1952-53, is considerably shorter than normal, but finds space to discuss many of the problems which face the University at the beginning of 1954. Selections of special interest are complied below.

"A discussion of the University by a graduate of Harvard College must inevitably begin with a consideration of undergraduate affairs. But it would be quite pretentious for me, who was here only on Commencement Day, to try to give a full report of the last academic year. I shall therefore offer only a few general observations which have grown out of the necessity I have been under to take a fresh look at Harvard after an absence of 25 years.

. . . Since the College is not vastly different in size than it was 25 years ago, this must imply a significant increase in the quality of the student body, for the pressures on all colleges to expand during this interval, though interrupted by wars and depressions, were considerable and insistent, and resistance to them must inevitably have brought increased selectivity. Though exactly comparable figures are hard to come by, the number of qualified students applying for admission for the fall of 1952 was probably several times that of 1927 . . . It is also clear, however, that a carefully considered and finally accepted figure as to what size the College should be in the years immediately is still to be sought. This is a problem for early consideration.

Stresses House System

No inconsiderable part of college experience in finding one's adult self in the give-and-take of association with one's contemporaries in an atmosphere permeated with ideas. It has always been a strong point of Harvard education that young men coming here to college are given an unusual amount of freedom and so of adult responsibility . . . With the acquisition of the Houses, a very superior opportunity was provided the student at Harvard to enjoy a constructive educational experience as a member of a comparable community of his peers.

. . . It is undeniable that there has been a vast improvement in Harvard's housing for undergraduates as compared with the situation 25 years ago. But since the Houses are overcrowded and tremendous pressures to admit more students are certain to break over us as a result of increased population, it is quite clear that a major problem, involving considerations both of enrollment and housing, is relentlessly up before us.

I find the resources open to the undergraduates at Harvard, over and beyond the splendid opportunity provided by the Houses, more impressive even than I had remembered them. Not least is the opportunity to be taught by a distinguished university faculty. Incidentally, I might add here that though some careless, unfavorable remarks have been made recently to the press about certain Harvard teachers, the facts, at least concerning all but a miniscule fraction are clearly wholly other than these would suggest. It is true that considerable use is made of Teaching Fellow . . . but it does not necessarily follow that this means inferior teaching. I am confident there are many occasions when it means just the opposite. . . .

But greatest of all the assets at Harvard College, I find in coming back after long absence, is still the vigorous tradition itself, felt by all of us in our time, which says that learning is the serious business as well as the genuine excitement of life. No one who stays long at Harvard can fail to feel or respect this, nor having experienced it, ever again be quite the same as he was before. It is a very good thing again to be associated with the work of Harvard College . . .

A University might be described, in Shakespeare's language, as a "quick forge and working-house of thought." Certainly one cannot read through a set of annual reports of the various schools, laboratories, museums, collections, institutions, observatories, foundations, and all the rest which make up Harvard without seeing that this University, with its nine faculties totalling three thousand members, and with a combined student body of approximately 10,000 is clearly such a place.

Each deartiment and every division of the University has a vital program of its own, but each of them. I have discovered rather sadly, has extensive present responsibilities which tax, if they do not go beyond, its available resources, and each also has prospective needs arising from commendable ambitions which reach far beyond that. I should like to single out three of the professional schools for special mention.

The Graduate School of Educations had a very special interest for President Conant. It is clear that he saw in it an instrumentality by which the University could relate itself in a constructive way both in its research effort and in its teaching activity to the general educational enterprise of our country, especially as its elementary and secondary levels . . . . It seems to me clear that if it can make a contribution toward healing the catastrophic separation, characterized by mutual recrimination which was erroneously begun and has been too long continued, between liberal and progressive education it will have performed on of the very great services most needed in education at the present time.

Money for Education in School

. . . But its capacity to measure up to this opportunity is seriously held back by the precariousness of its present financial situation. . . It was altogether fitting therefore that the Corporation decided after his retirement to establish the James Bryant Conant Foundation for the Support of the School of Education. By Commencement time if was announced that $750,000 had been contributed to this fund. More has come in since, bringing the total closer now to the mark of the first million. But the matter cannot be permitted to rest there, for the full sum is needed if this school is to perform the high and important service which President Conant so rightly envisioned.

. . . A new interest in the Divinity School began with the report of the committee appointed by the Board of Overseers to visit in 1945. Moved by this, the President and Fellows in 1947 set up a Commission to make a study of the School's condition . . . Because, as the Study Commission pointed out, "to seek what is true is to engage in a moral and spiritual as well as an intellectual quest," it seems to me important that Harvard's school of religious learning be brought up to a standing and position of influence to that held by Harvard's other professional schools. Though much remains to be done completely to effect this in the years immediately ahead, I am happy to be able to report that this effort stimulated by the Overseers eight years ago is now strongly going ahead.

Health School Insecure

The third of the professional schools singled out for special mention in this report is the School of Public Health . . . My reason for calling attention to it here is that in this case, as in that of the School of Education, an excessive amount of its income depends on annual gifts. . . There is thus much too high a degree of precariousness in its operations, and I join in the wish several times reiterated by President Conant that its activity can soon be put on a more secure financial basis.

There is only one point at which I have felt any disappointment in finding my way into the University are unusually able and devoted. The students are a very select group. The educational and research programs in each of the schools are carefully considered, tested and active. There can be only pride in these things. And perhaps the matter should rest there, for it is clearly Harvard's purpose to be, rather than to appear good, if one can choose between these alternatives.

And yet I cannot help but feel some disappointment from the fact that though it is obvious to anyone here on the scene who cares to look that Harvard is good, still there are some perhaps even within our own faculty, to whom this great University appears to be something else. In hope in the years ahead we can get Harvard's true story better told and more widely understood than it appears to have been often in the past."