Tutorial Squeeze

The History Department, because of a shortage of tutors, has replaced individual tutorial for juniors with group tutorial. The Government Department is also short of tutors. But this department has chosen a different alternative: it has denied some juniors any credit tutorial at all.

An administrative slip-up made last Spring has intensified the problem in the Government Department. Due to a confusing application blank, many juniors did not make the request for credit tutorial which is required, and consequently found themselves without tutors this fall. The Department, taken aback by the 30 juniors who pounded on the door at the start of the year, has tried to accommodate as many of them as possible. It pressed every one of its teaching fellows to carry a maximum teaching load and thus found tutors for 14 of the late applicants. But it could not help those qualified among the remaining 16.

The Government Department has been properly worried about this bureaucratic failing, but a solution is by no means clear. Unlike History, Government has not met with a significant rise in qualified students, nor is it struggling with a temporary dearth of teaching fellows. The problem seems to lie in a lack of teaching fellows available for tutoring, but what is making them unavailable remains in doubt. A partial answer may rest with the seven new course assistants who are helping faculty members lecture and grade this year. These new posts are part of Dean Ford's efforts to stimulate better teaching in middle-level courses, and they are worthwhile as such. But they consume in teaching time the equivalent of tutorial for at least 10 students.

An increase in fellowships carrying a no-work stipulation may be another reason for the tutor short-age. For instance, a number of graduate students in Government this year cannot grants will not allow them to teach. A decrease in the number of faculty members willing to give undergraduate tutorial and a general increase in the time which a graduate student needs to spend on his own studies are two more factors which might explain the lack of tutors.

It is still too early to be sure that the tutorial squeeze this year is not simply temporary. Yet an increasingly tense ratio of tutors to tutees in the past few years suggests that this year's shortage may be a continuing problem. As such, it is important that the Government Department, and other departments faced with the same situation, take pains to ascertain precisely why they cannot muster the tutors they need.

The answer is important not only because 16 students have been deprived of tutorial, but also because the problem raises grave doubts about the success of two major faculty policies. First, is Dean Ford's program to improve undergraduate instruction, particularly the addition of middle-level sections and course assistantships, taking teaching fellows from the tutorial program? Second, will the departments find themselves physically unable to implement the Gill Plan without making major new outlays of income, such as hiring additional instructors, and some significant changes in departmental make-up? Dean Ford and the faculty should begin immediately to find the answers, or the Gill Plan may quietly smother.