Harvard Without Concentrations?

(The author is an Assistant Professor of French and Head. Tutor in Romance Languages.)

WHENEVER there is a progressive relaxation of the rules of a given system, it is natural for those who live and work in the system, even those who have favored the changes, to ask how far you can go before the whole system falls into incoherency.

Now, nothing is more deeply embedded in the notion of what an American college education is all about than the necessity of having a "major" (for which, as for most things, we have a different term at Harvard). Clearly we have effected in the last few years a liberalization of many of the constraints in what used to be a rather rigid structure of undergraduate studies. There are not only more departments, there are also inter-departmental programs; there is independent study for credit; there are some creative courses and some virtually student-taught courses. Through all the innovations, however, the concept of departmental concentration has not been seriously challenged, and now, particularly since we have been invited by the Dean to examine critically the present curricular setup, it is perhaps time to ask whether we couldn't do better without it.

It is worth mentioning that concentrations are not exactly intrinsic to the idea of education nor, for that matter, to the idea of Harvard. They did not even exist until the twentieth century. Departmental Honors programs were begun in 1908, and only in 1910 were concentration and distribution requirements inaugurated for everyone-a change which, according to Samuel Eliot Morison, was considered revolutionary. Before that, all one needed for graduation was to pass a certain number of courses, a mixture of free electives and a few prescribed courses. Indeed, a Faculty Report showed that 55 per cent of the class of 1898, which had almost no prescribed courses, elected little or nothing but elementary courses.

I know of at least one American university which is now experimenting on a limited scale with a majorless degree, probably similar no doubt to the idea of General Education concentration which has been suggested by Dean May as a possible alternative for Honors concentrations. What we should rather consider is dropping the concentration altogether, giving a P.A. to all graduates without its being "in" anything, and thus dispense with that half of the "Rules Relating" which details the frightening tangle of departmental concentration requirements.

The potential saving is much greater than the printer's bill for that section of "Rules." We have an elaborate administrative machinery which exists, principally to enforce concentration rules. It involves enormous amounts of paper work and man-hours-on the part of head tutors, departmental secretaries, and the registrar's office. If we could only drop the whole procedure of composing, advising about, and enforcing concentration rules, these efforts could be much better expended elsewhere. Not to mention the time the rules cost the student.

THE PARADOX of the past is that liberalizing the rules can increase their complexity. Exceptions and variants do purchase more individual choice in the material studied, but as they are incorporated into the rules, the text gets longer. What tends to come out is not something neat and streamlined but rather something resembling the Income Tax laws, which are wondrously complicated but do not represent a cogent system. The best way, and the most efficient, to gain the freedom to tailor academic programs, is to abolish concentrations completely.

But the rules do serve, it can be argued, to keep the student from scattering his course selections all over everywhere and coming out with nothing but a sort of Reader's Digest education, Intellectual dilettantism. The rules make sure the student at least does something in his four years at Harvard. In the first place, this isn't exactly true: everyone knows it is possible to get a Harvard degree while doing almost nothing for four years but reading an occasional chapter and playing the pin-ball machines. Besides, even if that argument were valid it wouldn't be compelling. Why not simply trust students to select their own courses, even if by so doing they can contrive to learn as little as possible? Do the goals of the machinery justify its existence?

In fact, my expectation of what would happen if one no longer had to "concentrate" is not , that most programs of study would sag and become amorphous. I don't even think things would change very much, except that there would be a lot less fussing. Concentration rules are not, after all, the only factor which spurs a person to prepare himself in one subject more than others. Even if Harvard imposed no specialization, a person who wants to do graduate work in history of sociology must know something about it; a pre-med still must have the requisite courses for entrance to medical school, and so forth. The program still has to be designed in terms of what you expect to do when you get out. It is like most people of intellectual temper to pursue things which capture their interest with some intensity anyway: if you really get intrigued by an area of study, you don't need concentration rules to force you to take courses in that area. Left to themselves, most students would still want to have some area, or areas, of competence by the time they leave here.

AND WHAT if they don't? I'm not sure I see why we should try to do anything about that. We can just admit that the B.A. doesn't really say much about a person except that he has spent a certain amount of time here. If we did not change the sixteen-course graduate requirement-there would be no necessity for doing so-the degree would then also signify a certain number of courses taken. We do not really need to certify more than that, and in fact we do not now. A "major" has no professional importance anyway; only a graduate degree does. If the Harvard undergraduate intends to get a job in business after graduation, the subject of concentration does not really matter. If the student has no specific reason to take many courses in one department wishes to disperse his work in many fields, it is hard to see that he will have suffered greatly if we allow him to do that. There may be some casualties of such a policy, but they would not be of tragic proportions.

Any college administrator knows that most of his time is taken up with matters that concern only a relative handful of students-the few who have serious disciplinary problems, flunk courses, or are too hung-up to function well. Most rules, especially those that set minimal standards, are only a problem to a small minority, at least in a school which can be quite selective in its admissions policy. If we stopped being paternalistic about students, "making sure" they do not somehow cheat themselves in terms of how much we think they should be profiting form Harvard, the rest of the community would have simple life and hardly miss rules it does not need.

Allowing the students who do not elect or do not qualify for Honors concentrations to major in General Education is too small a step. We do not need Honors concentrations. I am not sure we need Honors either, but if we do, we can have them without special concentrations. There would be nothing to prevent anyone who wishes to write a senior thesis from doing so: that could indeed be handled almost exactly the way it is now.

Perhaps Gen Ed requirements are foreign to this proposal too. As I understand them, they serve to guarantee that students take some courses outside their concentration areas. If so, suppressing concentrations defines that reason out of existence. If we did decide there should be some rule about distribution in various areas, there might be some sort of Gen Ed requirement, but it would have to be reformulated.

THIS proposal would no more do away with tutorial than departments. The departments would still be there; they just wouldn't prescribe requirements. They could, however, and probably should, draw up a sample program something like our present rules (but greatly decomplicated) to serve as a guide to student who ask what they should take in preparation for graduate school. They definitely should provide advice: the role of head tutor, though less arduous, would still be essential. A student could sign up for tutorial in any department, but naturally would not be required to do so. He, and the department, would also be spared the annoyance of filing concentrations and changes of same. The department could get rid of all those files it uses to keep track of students and the registrar could stop circulating reams of paper to tell them who is where and what his grades are. But I fail to see why the tutorial system should in any way suffer from the change.

I realize that, in line with these suggestions, one could go further. Logically, perhaps one should. That is where my own hesitations on the "how far can we go" matter come in. Why not scuttle the sixteen-course requirement as well and leave every man's education up to him? I have doubts about how well that would work out. Ideally, we should omit the four years too, and the whole community revert to the Greek university, a community for inquiry where a person stays as long as he deems needful. But that kind of university also should not grant degrees. Maybe the time will come when we can seriously entertain such a possibility. But given the function of the B.A. in current American society, we would do many of our undergraduates a disservice to let them leave here without degrees. I am trying to be practical. Doing without "majors" would be getting far enough ahead of that society for now, but I suspect that, at Harvard, at least, the transition would be as easy as the results agreeable.