The Mail ACADEMIC QUESTIONS

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

As student members of the Committee on Undergraduate Education, we offer the following nine questions for consideration by the entire Harvard community. The substance of the questions indicates the scope of our own thinking and suggests possible alternatives to the present system. We encourage comments on these questions from any source, addressed to Kate Ecker, 53 Shepard Street.

1. Can education be most effective

a) when it is restricted within structured time units like semesters?

b) when knowledge is delimited within units called "courses"?

c) when it is viewed as a product you go for (credits) or as a process you go through?

2. Should Harvard continue to confer the A.B. degree on its undergraduates?

3. Should the present grading system be replaced by a system of evaluation that is more personal, collaborative, and qualitative, and less quantitative and competitive?

4. Must an increased emphasis on teaching undergraduates come at the expense of the faculty's research?

5. How can supplementary means of educating undergraduates (e.g., allowing graduate and undergraduate students the opportunity to teach) be implemented?

6. Can a college which grants the student the freedom to structure his own program, with the aid of a more effective advisory system, establish academic concentration as an option instead of as a requirement?

7. Can a university that is a true community, exposing the individual to students and faculty with diverse interests outside the classroom (e.g., in Houses and a central student union), do without General Education requirements?

8. Should Harvard education perpetuate the dichotomy between the intellect and the rest of the personality or promote the integrated development of both?

9. Should the admissions procedures be altered to make the student body reflect the economic and social diversity in the nation, exposing the student to people of different backgrounds and fostering the necessary social change in our society?