ECONOMIC POSITION

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

An editorial on Dollars for Culture appeared in the CRIMSON of December 17. This editorial is primarily an attack on the views of educational finance of the writer. Whatever the explanation, the editorial presents a distorted analysis of my views.

My general position is that the college undergraduate pays less than costs. The faculty, indeed, tends to subsidize him. Institutions of higher learning are generally in financial difficulties. One way out is to require that students pay tuition more nearly equal to costs. That they can afford to do so is suggested by the anticipated lifetime income of a college man and a fortiori of a Harvard alumnus. Sample studies of incomes of families and spending patterns also point to capacity to pay full costs for a substantial proportion of college students. In fact, payments of costs would require an additional payment equal to considerably less than one per cent of the lifetime income of the student.

The CRIMSON attack seems to be based on the assumption that I hold the Harvard education as accounting for the income differential between Harvard men and non-college graduates. This interpretation is not justified. In fact, if the CRIMSON would examine my writings instead of assuming what I said (sometime ago they reviewed my study of the record of High Honors Students in which I elaborated this point), they would find that I was explicit.

The explanation is, in part, that Harvard men on the whole are high ability men. (Dean Bender has made this eminently clear.) Harvard men have good connections; and we hope that a Harvard degree makes a contribution. We assume that men studying at Harvard learn how to examine evidence, present a logical argument, classify facts, draw generalizations, learn how to work and to communicate. These contribute to their education and capacity to earn. The college degree also is increasingly a ticket of admission to the desired professions and business posts...

A second point of criticism relates to the cost of higher education vis-a-vis the charge. Here the CRIMSON concentrates on the small time given by faculty to undergraduates and the large costs of graduate instruction.

To some extent I agree with the CRIMSON here. I have argued on numerous occasions that graduate instruction is the most costly instruction, and I have also contended that all time spent on research should not be allocated to undergraduate costs. But this is far from agreeing with the CRIMSON.

First, it is well to remember that graduate instruction in Arts and Sciences accounts for but about 20 per cent of total enrollment; and even if it is very costly, the total effect is small.

Second, the research done by professors contributes greatly to undergraduate instruction. The faculty member who is not working on the frontier of knowledge is not, as a rule, a "great" teacher in the real sense.

Third, I would be surprised if, even at Harvard, the full-time faculty member--that is, the faculty member whose pay is charged full time to instruction--devotes more than one-quarter of his time to research. (A Chicago University study showed just that.)

Perhaps the CRIMSON editor thinks that the writer is inadequately sympathetic with the impoverished undergraduate. Far from it. Having gone through college on a shoestring, I am acutely aware of the problems of the impecunious student; and the last thing I would like to do would be to change the composition of our student body--and I believe this is the viewpoint of the Administration.

What I am proposing is a charge that would make it possible to attract able young men into the teaching profession. With the faculty experiencing a deterioration of economic status of 50 per cent vis-a-vis the rest of the population in 25 years and with demand for faculty rising four times as fast as for the whole working population in the next 15 years, an improved economic position of faculty is indispensable to maintain the high quality of a college education and in particular of a Harvard education... Seymour E. Harris,   Professor of Economics