For most Harvard men their Harvard A.B. is no longer enough of an education. Four out of five of last year's seniors went on to graduate school. The largest group of these--about a quarter of the class--is doing graduate work in the arts and sciences. Only a seventh of the class went immediately to work, and for the most part these were the academically poor or mediocre.
The post-graduate plans of '63 were much different than those of '39. Then one-third of the class went to work, a group not exclusively composed of the academically impoverished. The other-two-thirds did go on to graduate school; but only an eighth did grad study in the arts and sciences.
In one generation the percentage of Harvard men doing graduate work has increased by a quarter; the number becoming academics has about doubled.
The figures are stark, but their significance is by no means certain. Some responsible men have used them to indicate dire change; to others they are statistical signs of heartening progress.
One faction of critics takes a baleful view. The University they contend, is in danger of becoming a high-level prep school--a place to be gotten through because of where its merit badges lead, not an experience to be savored for its own value and for what it contributes to a rich life. Wilbur J. Bender '27 clearly had this in mind when he wrote his final report as dean of admissions in 1961. "We may be attracting students," Bender said then, "who look on school as preparation for college, college as preparation for graduate school, and graduate school as preparation for they know not what."
Even worse, in this view, the Faculty may have become principally committed to reproducing itself. Instead of educating a broad elite that might fill the top ranks of business, government, law, and medicine, Harvard may be producing simply an army of Ph. D.'s These men may do useful work, but much of it will be dull, competant, safe academic mediocrity.
Talent that might have provided leadership elsewhere may just become grist in the academic mill. Harvard may be encapsulating itself in an academic cocoon, deserting its country and--perhaps less cataclysmically--deserting its alumni.
But deserting the alumni is not something to be shrugged off lightly. Alumni support has given Harvard the financial endowment that bolsters its independence and academic freedom. If Harvard should alienate its alumni, it would become dependent upon government funds which might limit its freedom of inquiry and expression. Government controls on the Cambridge Electron Accelerator indicate the dangers of government largesse.
The process of breeding academics, the critics maintain, is accomplished principally through the monopoly professors enjoy as models of successful careers. In the cloistered world of the Houses, Mass Ave., and Brattle Street, students see few successful men in non-academic fields.
This explanation was made forcefully by Michael Shinagel, the associate director of the Office for Graduate and Career Plans, in his report on the performance and prospects of the class of 1961.
Promethean Professors
The professors are Prometheus, shedding light from the lecture podium, confident, knowledgable, urbane. Other models are remote. Some, particularly businessmen, are scorned. Academic values are prized to the exclusion of all other values. Honors students receive the attentions of their tutors; non-honors men are pariahs.
Moreover, in some cases, the faculty actively recruits among its undergraduates. This year it nominated 220 men for Woodrow Wilson Fellowships, given exclusively to those becoming professors. Fifty-five seniors received these awards and accepted them.
The concerns of the critics thus range from the basic nature of the college to the daily motives of the professors. As an aside, some critics castigate the motives that prompt some seniors to enter graduate school: for them graduate school is a device to postpone the dread day when a man must earn his living; it is also a means to evade the draft that requires less commitment than either marriage or expatriation.
However, the increasing number of Harvard men in graduate school and academic life can be viewed in a much more favorable light. If one grants the merit of academic work and the special merit of Harvard in fostering it, then it becomes highly desirable that more Harvard men be academicians. Indeed, it may represent a scandalous squandering of Harvard's resources that four-fifths of its graduates do not become scholars, especially in view of the keen demand for academicians.
