CUE Unanimously Votes To Open Elite Majors

The Committee on Undergraduate Education (CUE), an advisory body of students and faculty members, yesterday unanimously recommended that the Faculty Council open elite concentrations.

CUE is only empowered to make recommendations to the Faculty Council and can take no action on its own. Dean Rosovsky said last night that the opening of elite concentrations "is a faculty decision."

Rosovsky said he does not know when the Faculty Council will discuss the CUE recommendation.

Brad Behrman '78, a member of CUE, said yesterday he thinks it is "doubtful" that the Faculty Council will take action on the elite concentration issue "soon enough to affect the Class of '80," which will make official concentration choices later this mont.

In its resolution, CUE states that it supports the "principle that all Harvard concentrations should be accessible to all students."

To facilitate the enactment of policies consistent with this principle, CUE endorsed the Task Force on Concentrations' recommendation that "present enrollment practices in limited concentrations should be explored by those who supervise these concentrations and by the Faculty as a whole."

To this end, CUE recommended the establishment of a committee "with adequate student representation" to examine the current selection processes of the elite concentrations and to recommend changes in them to take effect by the time the Class of '81 selects its concentrations next spring.

The CUE resolution did not discuss the issue of providing more resources for dealing with increased enrollment if the elite majors are opened, an issue which previous CUE meetings examined in great depth.

"We recognize the problem of resources," Shelly Burtt '80, a member of CUE, said last night, but yesterday's CUE resolution was intended as "a statement of principle," not a concrete proposal on how to open up the elite concentrations.

Francis M. Pipkin, asociate dean of the Faculty who chairs CUE, said last night that opening elite concentrations "does not necessarily mean you have more people." Instead of having a committee limit the number of students in its program, the elite concentrations can be made "self-selecting, in the sense that they are harder," Pipkin said.

The concentrations could be kept small by making enrollment and degree requirements stiffer, Behrman said. Some elite concentrations already have made efforts to tighten up their requirements, he added.

The foreign language requirement of the Committee on History and Literature currently serves to limit enrollment in that program, Behrman said.