The Harvard House System

"Who really thinks about the Houses?" a student casually asked a high University official at an unofficial moment.

"Oh, I think everyone thinks about the Houses," was the off-the-cuff reply.

"Yes, but who thinks constructively about what the Houses should be?"

"Well, the Masters are concerned with parietal rules and the Committee on..."

"But does any powerful group which can get results work on the big problems?"

"No, none that I can think of," the administrator frankly answered.

His answer could not have been affirmative, for despite an occasional general report and frequent debate over trivia, very few constructive ideas have affected the Houses since President Lowell built them a quarter century ago. After initial student and alumni opposition to the then radical plan had subsided, the Houses gradually became subjects of complacent self-congratulation and reminders of an era when Harvard was smaller in size, but perhaps greater in strength.

Whether or not the Houses were once more vital centers because of fewer residents and a higher proportion of tutors, is a question on which honest men differ. Certainly the Houses offer some benefits today which were absent in the 1930's. But the critical point is that the Houses are not now what President Lowell intended them to be: "the way the benefits of the small college are combined with the rich offerings of a great university."

Today a behemoth University negates the real potential of Harvard's seven Houses, and unless well-planned efforts are made, the situation will grow worse as the University grows larger. It remains to be seen whether President Pusey's Administration will choose, or be able, to make those efforts.

A favorite maxim of University administrators is that the College derives its greatest strength first from its faculty, and second from its facilities. For the undergraduate, no "facilities" are potentially more important than the Houses, and yet for many they are little more than crowded dormitories with second-rate, although inexpensive, dining rooms.

It is evident that many undergraduates consider the House just another place to sleep. House activities suffer in comparison with college-wide associations; House athletics are dwarfed by varsity sports; and the House as a social community is drained by half a thousand students who seek social identification with various clubs. But most important, the House as an imaginative arrangement for bringing faculty and student together is very little arrangement at all. While the lucky student may make intellectually valuable contacts within the informal atmosphere of the House, for the great majority, contact with tutors comes about as close as the distance between a lecturer and his audience. According to the recent survey of undergraduate opinion, the two top complaints voiced by students are "lack of close contact with the faculty" and "impersonality of atmosphere."

Just as with the College as a whole, the strength of the House depends primarily on the strength of its staff, and the ratio of tutors to students. The New York Times Magazine succinctly expressed the idea in 1930: "The success of the House plan eventually depends on the tutor who furnishes the manpower of the educational plant, of which the House is a mere shell." At present, while the House possess potentially strong staffs, their manpower in relation to the number of students in each House is negligible. As the number has increased, the proportion of tutors has decreased, while the Houses, hence the College, have suffered.

Although it would be unrealistic to dwell on the tutorial system as it existed in the College of the mid-30's, nothing is a more nostalgic form of conversation. Invariably, Masters refer to the few years when virtually every student had an individual tutor, often a full professor or junior faculty member. But the system had grave difficulties and perhaps insoluble inner-conflicts, which exploded full-force in the face of President Conant.

When President Lowell retired in 1933, the number of tutors who had no chance of academic advancement had become groundswell. The individual tutorial program for everyone, moreover, was a serious drain on both the budget and the tutors' time. In 1936, tutorial became an optional activity for a department, with tutorial for all sophomores and for only those juniors and seniors of exceptional ability. By 1938, faculty discontent forced President Conant to appoint the "Committee of Eight" to investigate "some problems of personnel in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences." For the purpose of the individual tutorial system, the Committee's recommendations for a rigid system of academic advancement meant that there would be fewer tutors, and, in that sense, the grand beginnings of tutorial were destroyed. The Committee, nevertheless, did perform the necessary function of reducing the base of the academic pyramid, which had swollen out of all proportion to the number of permanent appointments at the apex.

The Second War further impaired the tutorial system, and in the post-war years undergraduate dissatisfaction grew as the plan became more impotent. Then the "Bender Report" resulted in a decentralized Dean's Office (the Allston Burr Senior Tutors) and the concept of group tutorial. As an alternative to the expensive system of individual tutorial, group sessions were perhaps the best solution which could be expected. Certainly they are better than no tutorial at all.

But a weakened tutorial system has meant increased reliance on the focal method of educating large numbers of students. While it is perfectly true that Professor X can as well speak to 1,000 students as to 100, and while educational television may allow him to lecture to half the United States, these are not solutions to the central problem. Building larger lecture halls and more Houses will permit the College to expand, but at the expense of many inestimable values of student-teacher relationships.

Lecturers Must Stimulate

It is currently fashionable to attack the lecture system, and it is well to recount its usefulness other than as a convenience in dealing with large number of students. Certain courses are designed for the acquisition of basic material which is not conveniently found by reading. Others deal with technical material which is difficult to grasp in written form. And, perhaps most important, the lecture allows the great teacher, the seminal mind, to communicate with more people than he could meet individually or in small groups. The success of this theory, however, depends almost entirely on the lecturer's ability to transmit his enthusiasm for the subject--in other words, on his personality. And it is apparent that the number of teachers with these qualifications is small indeed compared to the total number of lecturers.

With regrettable frequency, however, lectures became a "relic of the times before the printing press was invented." Often the lecturer would do himself and his students a service if he mimeographed his remarks and let the student read them quietly in a library. In any case, the danger of the lecture as a means of pouring out quantities of information which the student tries to blot up by frantic notetaking is apparent. The listener becomes the passive object of one-way communication with a vocal text-book.

The tutorial system was designed to provide the two-way communication between student and teacher which the lecture system rarely permits. As the influential Student Council Report of 1948 put the problem: "The real keynotes of education--learning to think, learning to read, and learning to work efficiently in groups--are aims achieved less in lectures than anywhere else." In other words, the lecture system bears only occasional relevance to President Lowell's cherished principle of self-education. The tutorial plan was an essential part of that idea, and the House system its natural vehicle. For above all, the tutor is not intended to be another lecturer or quiz master, but the original contact from which informal intellectual relationships develop.

Informal Contact Important

Unless a strong tutorial system is firmly anchored in the House system, it cannot realize its potential. Ideally, the student's tutor should live in the House, where formal meetings would be regular, but also where informal contact would be frequent. Hopefully, with additional Houses and reduced crowding, the University will be able to approach the ideal, but sheer weight of numbers and dictates of the budget make a return to the system of the early '30's highly unlikely. Increased funds from foundations, and perhaps a reapportionment of some University funds, can undoubtedly strengthen the tutorial program, but it is apparent that the University will be forced to explore new methods of insuring an adequate measure of faculty-student contact.

Winthrop House has led experimentation in the field by planning House sections in courses large enough to permit the arrangement. (At present, the plan is in operation with Economics 1 students.) Master Ronald M. Ferry tentatively views the program as a success, and there is no reason why it cannot be extended to other Houses when reduced crowding permits. The principal value of the plan will be its tendency to bring an increased intellectual orientation to social contacts on the House level. In theory, a discussion of economic determinism at an afternoon section meeting among House members might be continued at dinner. Particularly if the tutor is a resident, the fusion of both student and teacher as members of an academic community can be of importance both to the concept of sections and to the vitality of the Houses.

Even more significant than House sections can be imaginative efforts to enlist more faculty interest in the House and to bring all levels of teachers into a closer relation to its function. At present, this is virtually impossible because of the pressure of numbers. The Houses are filled to overflowing, and only when new Houses are built can room be made for more teachers--either as residents or as close associates. The University should be wary of building more office buildings, and instead should concentrate on including more office space for faculty members in both existing and new Houses. When a professor works and holds office hours in a particular House, he is more likely to dine there than in the Faculty Club or a restaurant, and such informal contacts can easily develop into important channels for the exchange of ideas. Within the House the professor may eventually come to feel himself a member of a stimulating social and academic community, and until that time, an office in a House can be made more pleasant than a crowded niche in Widener or a grimy office along Massachusetts Avenue. As Eliot House Master John H. Finley Jr. '14 expressed the idea, "The first step for the creation of the Houses as real communities is the enlistment of an increased proportion of faculty time." This does not necessarily mean that the professor would have less time for his personal work, but only that he would do more of it in the Houses. As a result, he may find that he can reapportion his time in a manner more stimulating to him, and certainly more welcomed by the student.

Admittedly, a conflict exists between teaching and research, but only by involvement in the Houses can the professor enjoy the real satisfactions of communication with younger minds. When, and if,5The Adams House Library