HPC Reviews Independent Study Flaws

The Harvard Policy Committee has issued a report calling for sweeping expansion of the University's Independent Study Program.

The audit, approved Monday by the HPC, says that the program is badly under publicized and often misruled by the departments. The HPC proposes that students in all rank list groups be allowed to take Independent Study (now only those with honors average can) and also suggests that the decision to approve or reject Independent Study projects be taken out of the department's hands.

Dean Ford said yesterday that he hadn't read the report and didn't know when it would be acted upon. Edward T. Wilcox, secretary of the CEP, commented that the recommendations were "very interesting, but I'm staggered by the thought of trying to put them into action."

No Action Now

"After spending two meetings on pass-fail," he continued, "the CEP is badly backed up on regular business already. It's self-evident that we're going to have to respond to this report somehow, but independent study is a very complicated question, and will just have to wait. I can't see any action for a year at least."

The audit, drafted by HPC president Henry R. Norr '68, says that most students do more work in their Independent Study than in the average course and reports that the educational experience is one of their best at Harvard.

The program's problem, the report says, is that so few benefit from it. Independent Study is regulated to an obscure corner of Rules relating to College Studies, the audit charges, and many students go through Harvard without knowing what they are missing.

The HPC recommends that: need to attack these urban problems in systematic and fundamental ways, and to enlist and train larger numbers of talented young people who can multiply their efforts."

The statement continued, "Until now there have been too few organized efforts to accord sustained teaching and research on these problems the institutional standing and commitment which befit their importance, and which are required to attract and hold the best minds. We see the programs announced today as a first large step in that direction."

Professorship Necessary

Harvard officials feel that professorships are necessary to attract first-rate people in urban studies, and that these people are essential for long-term work and for attracting research money. Pusey said yesterday. "It is important to recognize the board problems involved and the need for continuity in research. New professorships are a more primary way to develop studies in a field than are short-term research grants."

Don K. Price, Dean of the Kennedy School of Government, thinks the new permanent appointments "fit well into the Harvard incentive system" and should result in more Ph.D. candidates, new undergraduate courses, and fuller research.

James Q. Wilson, professor of Government and former director of the Joint Center, said Tuesday that "the new professorships will sustain our short-term research efforts, give them continuity, and relate more closely to action programs. Able people are scarce in this field; the Center has brought some, and this grant should attract more."

Moynihan felt that new professorships may help provide a "critical mass," where enough people from different disciplines gather in one community to look at the same urban problems and to reinforce each other with their different backgrounds. "The distinctive quality of urban studies is that they call on disciplines spread throughout the departments and professional schools of a modern university," he said. "In the case of Harvard and M.I.T., they require not only a high degree of interdisciplinary work, but also a very great deal of interuniversity cooperation.

Harvard already has considerable urban programs in the faculties that will receive the new chairs and also in the graduate schools of Business, Medicine, Divinity, and Public Health.

Source of Funds

The Joint Center will continue to be a source of research funds and a center for seminars and research publications at the two universities.

According to several Harvard officials, some chairs may be filled by next fall. Ford will allow the University to use the endowment income temporarily for junior faculty until the permanent appointments are made.

Harvard's interest in a Ford grand began last fall with conversations between Bundy and Pusey. In the early winter, Pusey asked Wilson to review faculty strengths and weaknesses and to make suggestions as to how a grant could make its strongest contribution among the Harvard faculties. Wilson assessed the capacities, degrees of promise, and depth of involvement in various areas of the University and recommended a package of chairs.

Then Pusey sent an application to the foundation January 3 for a grant approximately twice the size of the final one. In the spring and early summer, Price chaired a committee that included Wilson and Moynihan to handle the negotiations and administer the relevant information between Ford and the involved Harvard schools. "Ford did a good bit of visiting, but in the end pretty much left the priorities to Harvard," Price stated last week.

During the summer, rumors floated around the School of Education that the grant would include funds for action programs and that at the last minute these were dropped. But Harvard officers have said that the nature of the grant was decided by Pusey and the foundation at an early stage.

"We appreciate research and action money, but in this grant it was critical to get people now," said Wilson. "Unanimity existed among the people involved on this question, and there was surprising ease in deciding where the priorities lie."

Theodore R. Sizer, Dean of the Faculty of Education, said Tuesday that the $3 million Ford grant was a "long-term sort of thing, whereas our action programs are more short-ranged." He added that Ford had awarded the school $230,000 for another year's continuation of its studies and programs on racial integration