Running America From Cramped Quarters

This spring, when the Kennedy School of Government was searching for a commencement speaker, the class marshals decided they wanted a prominent government official to deliver the address. Why not, they asked, try President Reagan? He certainly was the type of speaker they were looking for. Besides, it would be a fitting symbol for the rising star of the University, indicating how far it has progressed.

President Bok wasn't as thrilled with the idea. Haunted by the thought of how to explain to the outside world why the President of the United States came to visit a graduate school and not the University, he quickly snuffed out the plans.

Word of the incident leaked out, causing the K-School and the University some embarassment. In this case, the school's grand aspirations probably caused little permanent damage. But increasingly, K-School officials are realizing that their hopes of grandeur may result in detrimental side effects.

A cursory reading of recent issues of "Update," the K-School newsletter, reveals the rapidity with which the fledgling institution is growing. Three years after planting roots on the corner of Boylston and Memorial Drive, the school has boosted the size of its student body eightfold. A government executive training program sprouted last fall, and has since been nurtured by a $600,000 federal grant. Currently, officials are preparing for the transplant of an urban planing program from the Graduate School of Design (GSD). And the school's increasing number of research centers have yielded several studies that received nationwide attention.

The growth of the Kennedy School, which will soon add a new building to house its burgeoning capacity, was unabashedly described by the school's administrative bulletin as "the single most significant piece of institution building undertaken at Harvard during the seventies."

And yet K-School officials cannot chalk up the 1980-81 academic year as an unqualified success. Official publications have focused on the fruits borne from the institution's growth. The predominant concern for many people, however, has been the weeds growing up alongside.

There have always been critics who said that the school was growing too much and too fast. This year, some think their suspicions have been confirmed. Long before President Bok last year ordered the Masters of Public Policy (MPP) program to absorb the GSD City and Regional Planning (CRP) program, Graham T Allison Jr. '62, dean of the K-School, argued that an expanded home was necessary. Now it's urgent.

But Allison himself admits that he is concerned about whether the new building can be started in time. According to original plans, K-School coffers should be stuffed by July 1 with $6.25 million earmarked for construction. Ground should be broken shortly afterwards and professors could start moving in by 1983.

Today, less than a month away from deadline, the fund drive has tapped just over half the necessary dollars, and $1.25 million of that is a challenge grant contingent on raising the total amount.

If July I comes and goes, and the school is still short of funds, they will have to scale down the initial building plans or petition the Corporation for an extension. Either way, administrators will be forced to trim their dreams, and the current site, by their accounts already bursting at the seams, will have to bear the burden a bit longer. "Elements of the program will suffer, but the world won't come to an end." Allison says, adding current programs will not suffer.

Everyone agrees that the stalled construction does not signal a public policy Armageddon, but several professors, especially those dealing with the merger of the MPP and the CRP, are worried about how the school will house the students and faculty from the new program. Laurence E. Lynn, professor of Public Policy and chairman of the faculty committee hammering out details of the merger, refuses to even speculate about what will happen should the building not be finished by 1983; "I wish the building existed now. For every month delay, the strain gets worse," he says.

Concerns over the building have only exacerbated problems with combining the two programs. Bok ordered the mix because he felt the CRP program was becoming more of a public policy discipline than a design education. But the two programs differ in the emphasis they place on quantitative as opposed to qualitative analysis, and disagreements have spilled over into their attempts to develop a joint basic curriculum and admissions policy.

Students on both sides have complained about the combination. Some currently studying at the K-School think it will result in the dilution of the quality of the MPP; one CRP student said he was afraid the unique qualities of the design program would be lost. Criticizing the more mathematical stress of the current MPP, he said, "at least we remember it's people we're dealing with."

After effects of growth have led to student disenchantment. Two MPP students recently circulated a survey to gauge the satisfaction of their colleagues with the program, and more than 40 per cent of the respondents said they were unexcited by the MPP program. Two reasons commonly cited were the lack of contact with professors, and the size of the classes.

The expanding student body has also hampered the school's ability to place students in jobs, especially at a time when the economy is shaky and the President has imposed a federal hiring freeze. The job search program at the K-School has expanded to accommodate more students, but Norman Smith, dean of student services, admits that "growth has caused a problem in the sense that each person is not getting very individualistic service."

There is also worry that other non-tangible goals have been trampled under foot while the school has hastily pushed towards measurable progress. A complaint, lodged last October by a national women's organization, focused attention for the first time on the school's dearth of women and minority faculty and students. Hale Champion, executive dean of the K-School, says that officials themselves are not pleased with the racial and sex diversity of the school, but he defends its commitment to affirmative action.

Others are not as willing to believe that the school is doing what it can. Elsa Porter, a member of the school's visiting committee, calls the school's record "dismal," and Lori A. Forman, a member of the K-School Student Association, citing the school's refusal to hire a minority recruiter, argues that "the budget has constantly dictated policy rather than what was ethically or socially right."

Some would contend that it is the school's obsessions with growth which causes its problems. Donna Blackshear, head of the K-School Black Caucus, says, "I would attribute it partly to the fact that the school is expanding. People who are working on these issues are also working on other matters."

The K-School is not playing a zerosum game, as they would say on Boylston St. It will continue to grow, striving to become the Harvard Business School of the public sector. Few students and faculty would argue that it should restrict such expansion, since both reap the benefits of increased prestige, but some feel that in an effort to grow, it has forgotten them. Porter sums up the combination of concern and optimism. The K-School, she says, is "doing a lot of things. It's having growing pains."