Dean Lists Pressures on Students

Three Harvard deans and a Master spun out an intricate skein of interwoven fact, figure, and comment yesterday on the College and its undergraduates; listening was a relaxed but fascinated 25th reunion contingent--a group large enough to fill the main floor of Lowell Lecture Hall to the last seat.

The speakers depicted today's average undergraduate as an intense young man, better prepared academically than his predecessors of the '30's and vastly more interested in going on to graduate study.

And, they noted, he is considerably more skilled at taking standardized tests. As one man put it, students today are nursed and weaned on them."

Robert B. Watson '37, dean of the College, opened the discussion with a few facts about the class of 1937, comparing it to the classes of 1965 and 66. Perhaps the most surprising difference he noted was a rise since 1937 in the number of applicants for each class--5000 now as opposed to 1400 then.

The notion that present undergraduates are more intense first came up during the observations offered by Fred L. Glimp '50, dean of Admissions. "Today's students," said Glimp, "are much more highly motivated;" he felt their years in secondary school had not been so "carefree" and feared the years they would spend in college might follow the same pattern. There is a danger, he said, that the College might someday be populated by persons "too worn out to be curious."

Comments made by F. Skiddy von Stade, Jr. '38, dean of Freshmen, touched on the same subject from a different angle.

Instead of describing student behavior in terms of interior motivation, von Stade listed several kinds of outside pressure affecting undergraduate life. Among the forces he mentioned were:

* Parents--whom he felt were often guided by the theory ("sheer baloney") that a boy who does not attend an Ivy League College is a failure;

* Competition--"It's a tough year all around;"

* Being in the wrong field of concentration but being hesitant about getting out of it--"50 per cent of every class for the past 15 years has said it was going into science; only 25 per cent stays there;

* Desire to get into graduate school--"80 per cent are now heading there, and for them the plan means 'I've got to do well.'"

Several alumni asked questions on this last point: in response to one, Watson mentioned that only about 40 per cent of the class of 1937 had gone into graduate study. The audience also wondered whether the Sophomore Standing Program promoted the same sort of academic specialization and professionalism.

But at different times during the morning, the speakers mentioned at least two brakes checking any trend at the College toward an increasingly academic orientation. David E. Owen, master of Winthrop House, praised the current regular annual allotments of Ford Foundation money to the Houses for cultural enterprises, saying that they took "some of the professional pressure off the undergraduates."

And Glimp emphasized that admissions policy over the next ten years would attempt to keep the lower aptitude levels of succeeding classes at a fairly constant level, rather than let Harvard pick each year the 1200 men seemingly destined for the most brilliant academic careers.

Owen said that "over the last quarter century, the center of gravity in student life has clearly shifted toward the Houses." He cited the creation of the Allston Burr Senior Tutorships as the most important single factor contributing to this change. For, he felt, each Senior Tutor is really an assistant dean--thus locating the Senior Tutors in the Houses "decentralizes the administration."