Great Debate: Small College vs. University

The next two pages contain a feature story on Bard College, the first in a series of three on small New England Colleges. The second, on Amherst, will appear Friday to be followed by the concluding feature on Middlebury. As an introduction we present an analysis (at left) of a large college in a university near Boston.

The purpose of the series is to try to shed some factual light on one of the great controversies in American education--the small college-big university question. For years this debate has raged, with the proponents of the small college maintaining the merits of intimate student-faculty relations and informality against the eminent faculty, research facilities and diversity of the university.

In choosing the colleges, we have tried to pick three which are as different as possible both in character, and success. Bard, which we feel has largely failed, is young, ultra-progressive and financially on the rocks. Amherst, which we feel has been highly successful, is old, conservative and wealthy. Middlebury, in the middle, is a perfect amalgam of both the advantages and disadvantages of a small college.

Square in the middle of the Yard stands a gray, rectangular anomoly--University Hall, once the center of the College, today the center of a college within a university.

For Harvard College is not a four-year liberal arts institution in its own right but an integral part of a greater university system. To a large extent the nine graduate schools of this system have swallowed up the College and today there is little undergraduate life which they do not color.

Currently there is the feeling in University Hall that these schools have been overemphasized during the past half century and a growing group favors a "Back to the College Movement." This group has gained considerable impetus since the inauguration of President Pusey, who is a strong supporter of the undergraduate.

The effectiveness of the moment will depend largely on understanding the points of contact between the social and intellectual worlds of the undergraduate and the older graduate student. And they are many.

Most noticeable are the middle group courses in which freshman, upperclassmen and, students in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences attend the same lectures and take the same exams. The effect of this mingling of more mature students with their greener brethren has been to raise the level of the undergraduate's work and give him a more mature outlook on both his studies and life in general.

A peculiarity of the system is that no distinction is made between the ability of the graduate and the undergraduate and each is expected to do the same calibre of work. Though special tests are often given to the graduate student, he learns the same material as his younger counterpart and takes the same final exam. The end product of such a system is that an undergraduate is forced to a level of maturity which he might not have reached were he competing solely with his classmates.

Faculty Breadth

Such a relationship between College and graduate schools means that professors must do double duty and press the graduate at the expense of the undergraduate.

The story is told of the professor in an obscure field who was about to leave his opening day lecture on finding that no one had shown up to take his course. The delighted man planned to pass the semester in further research. But great was his dismay when a student hurried up to say he wanted to take the course.

"Are you sure," the professor asked. "Remember I shall be getting $5,000 for teaching you alone." "I'm quite sure," the student replied. "You see the University is paying me $500 just to listen to you."

This story illustrated the breadth of courses which the tie with the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences makes available to the undergraduates in the College. This hook-up has forced many men to leave pure research and venture into teaching, particularly in the fields of General Education, where the outstanding faculty of GSAS is teaching in the lower level G.E. courses. This is a relationship which the normal four year college can not offer.

Aside from actual course material, the tie-up with the GSAS has created an undergraduate atmosphere of respect for intellectualism which goes beyond the normal undergraduate tolerance of his more brainy contemporary. It has built on the Harvard tradition that a man can be intellectual without being ashamed of it and that he may pursue his own interests without having to apologize.

In the social world this stately graduate school influence has bred an anti-collegian air which has become characteristic of Harvard. The fate of the All-College Weekend is perhaps the best illustration. The tradition of social independence which inclined the undergraduate to small cocktail parties rather than beer-blasts forced this experiment in "mass, collectivist entertainment" to close its doors after losing over $500. The College just seemed to have no interest in this sort of amusement after the initial weekend two years ago. It just seemed to crumble from inertia.

It's fall was symptomatic of a general dislike within the College for mass affairs for which notices are tacked on bulletin boards or printed in the Crimson and everyone is invited to the Straw Hat Ball with promises of "georgeous women, suave men, and soft, sensuous music."

Even the Pogo Riot of two springs ago does not exemplify the peculiar sort of school spirit which the beanie circuit so loves to rant over. Here was a case of a spontaneously begun riot which worked itself into a frenzy in a short time and died just as quickly. But there was no organization behind it, no crying editorials which said to get out and scream for the old school.

Lenient Rules

This is characteristic of a restraint in the College which is at once a part of the Harvard tradition and the settling effect of the graduate schools. The integration of the two has given the undergraduate a pride in his tolerance of partisan demonstrations, but his dislike for joining up to toot the proverbial horn. He prefers the wait and see attitude.

More likely than not this passive attitude stems from the sober University Hall as much as from any Harvard tradition of individuality. For within these gay walls the Rules and Regulations of Harvard College are made with great latitude.

Though the undergraduate has crossed officialdom frequently over parietal rules, he has held as a cherished possession his right to a car, to drink as he sees fit, and except for freshman PT credits, to exercise when and how he likes. And on such occasions when the parietal rules cramp his style, Boston awaits his dollar with open arms.

University Hall says only that bills must be paid and study cards filed on time, but no one has to go to Church and from orientation week to commencement no undergraduate has to attend more than one or two meetings larger than 500. So long as he passes his exams and complies with course requirements he is not compelled to attend lectures and, for that matter, to do the reading.

His is a free choice in a gigantic plant rising from the basement of Widener's stacks to the star fixed on the eye-piece of an observatory telescope. Whether or not he uses these facilities is up to him, but the very fact that they exist pose problems of selection which an undergraduate in an ordinary four-year college never faces. With such opportunities the Harvard undergraduate finds interests which he never suspected existed and which in large measure help to develop him as a scholar and as an individual.

This diffusion of talent and interests also characterizes the university's immersion in community life on a local and national scale. As a famous community of scholars, the university creates a reputation for the college so that in the minds of its students the two become synonymous terms.

Goldfish Bowl

Many come here under the impression that they are going to a college and emerge to find they have lived four years in a university whose national reputation has made the student feel he is swimming in a goldfish bowl through which he is always being observed. This creates a "high seriousness" like that at no other American university.

Away from the public's eye the college's social life is closely tied with that of Boston, so closely in fact that undergraduates find that the big city's night clubs, theatres, and restaurants are only a subway token away when the college entertainment isn't up to snuff. The effect of this metropolitan competition is to improve the quality of the college productions and give them an air of professionalism which a small college show in a small community never achieves.

Exactly how the "Back to the College Movement" under President Pusey will effect this college-university system is uncertain. Much has already been done through General Education to cut down specialization which the graduate schools brought to the Yard. And the strengthened tutorial program has tightened faculty-undergraduate relations.

The house system has brought together a cross-section of undergraduates into a social and academic unit, and the commuter is no longer a neglected figure.

But it is highly doubtful that any new trend toward a more closely integrated undergraduate life can upset the traditional immersion of the college in the university and through the university in the nation and world at large.

The university lifts the college student out of his collegian environment and thrusts him into an educated community. It is a Harvard phenomena that no man is known as "The Big Man on Campus" because there is no central Harvard campus. But it is characteristic of Harvard that the main building of the college is also the main building of the university