Pusey Leads First Major Capital Campaign

As the Class of 1956 wrapped up its first year at the College, they were joined by a fellow newcomer to Harvard. Almost five months after the sudden resignation of James B. Conant ’13 that January, Nathan M. Pusey ’28 was selected as the 24th president of the University.

When Pusey arrived in Cambridge, the University had been accumulating what he would later describe as a “backlog” of financial needs for two decades. But by the time the Class of 1956 approached its graduation, Pusey was on his way to building a legacy as the University president who oversaw Harvard’s first major capital campaign.

His fundraising efforts would eventually quadruple the University’s endowment and budget. Pusey considered his task as president to make Harvard “an academically stronger University by making it a more affluent one,” according to a 2001 book about the University’s history, “Making Harvard Modern,” by Morton and Phyllis Keller.

BIG-BUDGET BEGINNINGS

The Class of 1956 witnessed only the very beginnings of Pusey’s ambitious fundraising drive—an effort that included the Program for Harvard College (PHC), which raised over $80 million, the equivalent of $575 million today.

Though not formally announced until the 1957 Commencement, the PHC began to take shape during the Class of 1956’s final years at Harvard. The program was meant to benefit undergraduate education by financing major construction efforts, increasing financial aid, and attracting high-quality professors through enhanced faculty benefits.

The fundraising that occurred during Pusey’s tenure as president was accomplished largely through grants and donations from alumni and other sources. On several occasions, Pusey appealed to alumni to help the University meet its financial needs.

Just months before the Class of 1956 graduated from the College, Pusey spoke to alumni at a meeting of the Associated Harvard Clubs, where he told his audience that the University would need at least $40 million for a major construction program.

The $40 million figure was a “conservative estimate” that did not include endowments and funds needed for non-building costs, such as the financing of teaching and research, Pusey said, according to an April 1956 Crimson article.

Pusey added that “a staggering sum will be necessary for the medical area and hospitals associated with our Medical School,” according to the Crimson article.

According to a May 1956 Crimson article, Pusey told the Cambridge Council of Neighborhood Associations that a “backlog of needs” for construction spending had been accumulating since the 1930s and had reached the point of urgency.

Pusey was not the only one articulating Harvard’s need for increased spending.

In April 1956, a University committee recommended a $6.5 million expansion in Harvard’s visual arts program. The Crimson reported that month on a report issued by the Committee on Visual Arts, which proposed new spending for a Harvard Theatre, a new Design Center, salaries for new professors and museum staff, and building maintenance.

MONETARY INTAKE

Pusey’s efforts at soliciting donations from alumni by convincing them of Harvard’s dire financial needs were evidently successful, as the University saw enormous increases in its endowment and budget during his tenure as president.

In the fall of 1955, the Ford Foundation donated over $4 million, mostly to accommodate rising faculty salaries.

Harvard received more than $3.75 million during the first quarter of fiscal year 1955-56 and had received half a million dollars more during the same portion of the previous year. Fundraising success continued the following year, with the University taking in over $3 million in the first quarter of 1956. More than $300,000 of that money was earmarked for financial aid.

In the second quarter of fiscal year 1956, the University received more than $5.5 million in donations, mostly through a campaign to raise money for the Harvard Divinity School. Pusey characterized that figure as a million-dollar increase over the same period in the previous year, The Crimson reported at the time.

Harvard Medical School (HMS) also benefitted from fundraising efforts. The National Fund for Medical Education announced in early 1956 that it would donate almost $50,000 to HMS to fund increases in faculty salaries.

SADDLING STUDENTS

Grants and alumni donations were not solely responsible for the additions to Harvard’s coffers that occurred while the Class of 1956 was at the College.

Students also contributed to the fundraising at Harvard, even if they did not do so voluntarily.

The Crimson reported in February 1953, during the Class of 1956’s freshman year at the College, that the Harvard Corporation would implement tuition changes recommended by then-Provost Paul H. Buck starting the following year.

The Corporation, the University’s highest governing body, raised tuition at both Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges to $800—a $200 increase.

Dan H. Hinz ’56 says the tuition increase affected the lives of students at the College.

“I, and most of the people I knew, came to Harvard with a tight budget so when the increase came along we had to rearrange things,” he writes in an e-mail. “The tuition, room and board were all fixed and were also the ‘must pay’ bills, so the amenities such as movies, ball games, etc. suffered.”

Soaring inflation following World War II was largely responsible for the need to raise tuition, according to Morton Keller, co-author of “Making Harvard Modern.”

“Practically speaking, between 1940 and the early 50s, inflation must have been at least 100 percent,” he says.

The Corporation also increased funds earmarked for scholarships and financial aid. Buck told The Crimson at the time that the University planned “to use a substantial portion of the money gained from increased tuition as free unrestricted funds for loans and scholarships for needy students.”

Other uses for the money raised through the tuition hike included increasing faculty salaries, offsetting rising costs and University expenses, and allowing all students to use all of Harvard’s athletic facilities and attend sporting events at Soldiers Field or Harvard’s Indoor Athletic Building whenever they chose.

Radcliffe students, unlike those at Harvard, did not receive the athletic benefits, even though tuition increases at the two colleges were identical. An agreement between Harvard and Radcliffe at the time required that the two schools have the same tuition, The Crimson reported.

DIVERSIFICATION FROM ACROSS THE NATION

George R. Suckow Jr. ’56 says that the increases in financial aid spending that occurred while his class was at the College had a noticeable effect on the makeup of the student body.

“When I went [to Harvard], it was in the midst of transitioning from a college for the wealthy to a college for the wealthy and a college for the GI bill people,” he recalls, referring to 1944 federal legislation that paid for the college educations of World War II veterans.

Suckow says that the presence of students on scholarships and those whose tuition was paid under the GI bill led to a more diverse student body at Harvard.

“I thought that was beneficial,” he adds.

William P. Pierskalla ’56 echoes Suckow’s recollections.

“When we came there, it was apparently a different student body than before World War II, because that was apparently more wealthy people and primarily East-coast,” he says. “We had a lot of GIs from the war and scholarship students.”

According to Pierskalla, The College was in the process of attempting to diversify its student body, at least geographically.

“I’m probably one of the only students ever to go to Harvard from northern Minnesota,” says Pierskalla, who grew up on a farm.

He says he received a scholarship to help him pay for his education and that he believes his geographic background factored into his admission.

But “there wasn’t much diversification in terms of race,” he adds.

One area in which the student body was diversifying, however, was through increased enrollment of public high school graduates, which Pierskalla says included himself, his roommate, and most people he knew at Harvard.



PEER PREDICAMENTS

Harvard’s fiscal growth, which financed the financial aid programs that allowed for these demographic changes in the student body, was not a phenomenon common to the University’s peer institutions.

The Crimson reported in October of 1958 that both Princeton and Yale Universities faced deficits of over a million dollars for the 1954-55 academic year.

The deficits occurred in spite of $150 tuition hikes at both schools in 1952 and a successful fundraising drive at Princeton during the 1953-54 academic year, according to the Crimson article.

The red ink was particularly problematic for Yale’s goals of raising faculty salaries and increasing scholarship funding.

As the Class of 1956 was on the cusp of graduation, Harvard was well on its way to vast financial growth.

Nonetheless, the University had to deal with some of the same economic problems as the rest of post-war America, such as large increases in the cost of living, according to Keller.

He says these economic changes made the financial climate in which Harvard found itself during the class of 1956’s time at the College very different from the pre-war years.

“It was a different world,” he says.

—Staff writer Matthew S. Lebowitz can be reached at mslebow@fas.harvard.edu.