CEP and Independent Study

Three weeks ago the Harvard Policy Committee proposed that the University's Independent Study program be opened to all undergraduates, a request that so far has been met with discouraging Administration silence. CEP Secretary Edward T. Wilcox has indicated that the program has no chance of being reviewed for at least a year.

The Faculty should liberalize Independent Study requirements sooner. Only honors juniors and seniors are eligible now for the program. By opening Independent Study to sophomores and non-honors students the Faculty would show that it meant what it seemed to say in approving the fourth-course pass-fail for all students last week--give students a chance to experiment outside their fields or pursue an idiosyncratic line of study without fearing damage to grade averages.

The Faculty's worry, of course, is that Independent Study is a blank check. The theory seems to be that only those students resourceful enough to discover the program in an obscure corner of Rules Relating to College Studies and to locate a willing Faculty advisor, deserve the benefits of Independent Study; non-honors students are not to be trusted without the regimen of course structure and grades. But since the Harvard curriculum is sprinkled with guts which can be passed on two nights work, the idea that grades effectively keep slackers in line is fanciful.

The HPC's proposal would raise no financial problems for the University. Nobody is paid for advising Independent Studies so the only limit on the program's size is the willingness of Faculty members to budget time for it. A flood of applications might fill the program to the saturation point, but overpopularity would be preferable to its present obscurity.

The power to approve projects should not, however, be turned over to the Senior Tutors as the HPC recommends. The student's own department or the department in which he plans his Independent Study are in a better position to screen promising projects than a senior tutor who may have no better basis for his decision than a student's academic reputation.

The University should bring out Independent Study from hiding and make its benefits--like those of fourth-course pass-fail--available to all students.