Sophomore Standing: The Making of a Policy

When thirteen students were admitted to the College as Sophomores in the fall of 1955, many spokesmen of prep schools felt that the problem of bored and apathetic Freshmen was well on the way to solution. The new program was simultaneously hailed as a major step in abbreviating the process of professional education. And to those who viewed the Advanced Placement program as higher education's most powerful tool for reforming the secondary schools, Sophomore Standing seemed a revolutionary reward for schools willing to raise their standards.

Today it is clear that Soph Standing has been both a success and a failure. As an educational program which experienced almost every trial and pitfall possible, it offers an instructive lesson in how policy is made, and in why it is made as it is.

Like the General Education program which had been passed a few years beofre, Sophomore Standing was the result of a book--called General Education in School and College--which attempted to create a theory to deal with an educational problem, in this case the transition from school to college. But unlike the famous "Redbook" on which General Education was founded, the newer study drew on a lengthy questionnaire given to college students to find out how they learned as well as what they ought to learn. It was, in this sense, an intermediate step between Gen Ed--which simply set down what ought to be taught--and the Freshman Seminars--which were almost exclusively concerned with the method rather than the content of education.

Approach Empirical

Even though its approach was empirical, the problem of working with-in a long-established tradition set sharp limits on Sophomore Standing. When the program actually went through, about a quarter of the Faculty voted against it, and with such opposition it was unthinkable to attempt the kind of radical change needed to create a coherent three-year program for those who came in as sophomores.

The alternative was simply to carve out a three-year program from the existing four-year college by amputating the Freshman year. Apathy, boredom, and the other problems of the first year were "met" by merely removing the name and the directly associated requirements like Gen Ed A, physical training, living in the Yard, and two-thirds of the lower-level Gen Ed requirement. After all, if there is no Freshman year there can't be problems associated with it.

Sophomore Standing was also designed to improve American education by rewarding schools that gave particularly good preparation. The College's privileges of leadership have given rise to serious and somewhat unpleasant obligations. The Administration feels, for example, that abandoning Soph Standing is absolutely out of the question because it would impair the prestige of the national advanced placement program.

In effect, this national commitment means that an unsatisfactory program could perfectly well be offered for reasons unrelated to the needs of students for whom it is given. Whether this is actually the case remains moot. The relations to national A.P. programs has continued to dictate the use of standardized tests instead of the more sophisticated criteria used, for example, in determining admission to the College.

Program Restricted

The triple aims of promoting advanced placement, creating a three-year program, and enlivening the first year for well-prepared students has severely restricted the program by establishing highly diversified criteria of success. More important, it created complex demands on the mechanical operation of the program which made it very difficult to relate the program to actual educational requirements of undergraduates. The blanket decision to treat the new students exactly like Sophomores solved many uneasy administrative problems which would have been left open by a more student-oriented policy.

It was not just this conflict of objectives which turned the attention of administrators to the less emotionally loaded problems of encouraging schools and helping students get through in three years. Most administrators and educators are reluctant to take responsibility for a program whose aim is as vague as improving education. The need for a concrete process which is accepted as being good, which can be expedited rather than evaluated, has given rise to reliance on highly objective measures of success, such as whether students and faculty are satisfied, rather than on more debatable valuations.

It is much easier to decide the House system is good and then see if Sophomore Standing meshes with Houses than to decide whether the program is good taken on its own merits. Even after five years, most complaints about the program are based on theoretical conflicts with other programs rather than on judgements of what students have gained.

Student Problems

This may help to explain why to little data is available. But a year ago a Senior Tutor did go over the records of Soph Standing students in his House, and concluded that all but one had had unsatisfactory experience with the program. The Dean murmured polite assent to this finding and said he might be interested if more people said the same, but so far there has been no rush of data.

Nobody knows, for example, whether Soph Standing students perform substantially above or below predicted rank list ratings during their careers. Nobody knows whether they change fields more or less often than others, whether they go to graduate school more or less often than others, whether they go to graduate school more than a comparably intelligent group of Freshmen, or whether their personalities change more or less than other undergraduates. Nobody knows, in fact, whether any measure except academic achievement would show Soph Standing students more mature than ordinary Freshmen.

The real reason why none of this data exists is that there is nothing approaching consensus on what it would mean if it were compiled. Criteria are no more available than the data.

This is one reason why the much-used phrase "Educational experiment" is mostly intellectual cotton candy. The other reason is the politics of making educational policy. An energetic administrator like McGeorge Bundy can push a remarkably popular program past the CEP and the Faculty; the one-quarter who opposed Soph Standing represented almost unprecedented strength of disagreement; politicking before meetings usually brings near-universal agreement or acquies cence, whatever is on the agenda. A recent questionnaire of Masoers, Senior Tutors, and CEP members indicated that not one quarter but thirteen out of seventeen favored either substantial revision or outright abolition of the program.

Once passed, however, a viable program is never abolished or emasculated; if it does not die of malnutrition, it will live. One reason why programs can survive in the face of very strong opposition was indicated during debate on Freshman Seminars. Only five of those covered in the poll mentioned above felt that the Seminars offered a satisfactory response to the problems of Freshman year, but the program was renewed almost unanimously last Spring. One member of the Faculty summed up the situation by saying that while he had no use for the Seminars, he was not going to stand in the way of anyone who thought them a good way of teaching.

"Laissez-Faire"

This is not only a very comfortable and expedient way of running a College, it keeps disagreements from reaching cutthroat levels. It is also in the best traditions of laissez-faire. But laissez-faire education, like laissez-faire economics, depends on a consumer-oriented economy. The issue of whether higher education should be a consumer industry has received very little attention.

At things stand, the fate of a program is likely to depend on how many students take an interest in it. And this can lead to some interesting contradictions. Thus, the seven-year college-law school program died some years ago for lack of student interest. Soph Standing shows every sign of prospering despite its unpopularity in Faculty circles. The ironic contrast of student opinion with Faculty attitudes was revealed in a Questionnaire by the Student Council Committee on Educational Policy which showed eighty per cent of Soph Standing students supporting continuation of the program without substantial change. As the program grows, the Faculty may well begin to wonder whether it has become committed to a baby-knows-best theory of education.

* * *

For those who conceive a program, its exemptions and requirements are a way to achieve the goals which produced the administrative devices. The exemptions given Soph Standing students are only granted to permit them to graduate in three years. But to students, the program is just a group of exemptions and requirements, unless one happens to have the same interests as the administrators. Even the minority who want to leave in three years are unlikely to have much concern for secondary education or much explicit interest in making the Freshman year more interesting. It is a less than astonishing result that most students accept Soph Standing for reasons that seem trivial or absurd to those with a broader view.

Recent study has also shown that the boredom and apathy to which Soph Standing was partially a response may be a way for well-prepared students to maintain a sense of superiority and avoid problems of competition, rather than a simple reaction to studying material they have already covered. This may explain why the Exeter Syndrome--"dissatisfaction, disillusion, despair, and departure"--seems common even five years after the Soph Standing program got under way. Misconceptions as well as divergent interpretations have been damaging.

Beyond the perceptions of either student of Faculty are certain secondary effects, which were not anticipated by the designers of the program. One was that the concessions made in permitting exemption from Gen Ed A and lower level General Education courses became something of a precedent. More recently, Freshman Seminars have been granted similar exemptions, and there has been serious discussion of exempting students from lower level Gen Ed courses after special exams similar to those given for A.P.

Another effect has been creation of an elite whose members not only accept Soph Standing because it is an intellectual merit badge, a series of exemptions, and a way of perpetuating prep school superiority, but also take advantage of the options in the options in order to maintain a sense of belonging to the elite group.

A surely unexpected result has been an increasing tendency in recent debates to suggest that a much purer form of Sophomore Standing be given to Natural Scientists than others, because the Natural Sciences are different. That Sophomore Standing should serve to add to the gap between the two cultures is a final blow.

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The college is a social unit as well as a number of individuals, and a pilot program like Soph Standing cannot change an entire college. As a result, the danger of creating an elite or an underpriviliged minority is as important as the objective merits a program might have if made universal. This is one of the crucial issues that has been missed in abstracted discussions of three and four year programs, as in the argument that, with pure logic, asks why, if four years it better than three, five should not be the best solution of all. The process of getting a degree in three years is quite distinct from getting a three-year education in a four-year college.

Just as a pilot program must work in the context of the older structure, a new program must be developed from the status quo. In retrospect, it has become quite clear that giving Sophomore Standing students all of the privileges of Sophomores was unrealistic and unnecessary, and attracted students who might have very little legitimate reason for accelerating. But at the time, the simple elimination of one year was the least revolutionary way of shortening the college years, for it called fewer principles into question than any total rearrangement might have done.

Sophomore Standing is absolutely unique. But it is also a part of the tradition of Harvard's making of educational policy, and one can learn more lessons by viewing it as an example than as a single tedious process of fighting over an immensely controversial program.

Glossary

ADVANCED PLACEMENT: a program by which students who have done advanced work in school are given credit for equivalent college courses. Tests are written and administered on a national basis by Educational Testing Service, which also runs the College Boards.

ADVANCED STANDING: the Harvard office responsible for administering advanced placement, sophomore standing, Freshman Seminars, independent study, and early admission. Also a collective term for advanced placement and Sophomore Standing.

SOPHOMORE STANDING: a program by which a person receiving advanced placement in three courses is permitted to enter as a Sophomore in order to treat him exactly as a Sophomore, the University Wales two lower level Gen Ed requirements, the Gen Ed A and physical training requirement, and permits him to live in a House during his first year.