B-School Sets Admissions Quota For Educationally Underprivileged

The Business School faculty voted yesterday to admit about 75 educationally disadvantaged students next September, in addition to those minority group students who can qualify in the regular admissions pool.

The faculty also voted to follow last year's policy of waiving minimum grade requirements for some educationally disadvantaged students failing courses. Last year, six out of 27 educationally disadvantaged students-all of them black-failed courses, but only three were forced to withdraw.

This year, 20 per cent of the 74 educationally disadvantaged students now in the first-year MBA class are predicted to fail.

The co-chairman of the Business School's Afro-American Union of Students had originally requested permission to attend yesterday's faculty meeting to present their views on a quota system. However, before the meeting they agreed to a compromise which will enable them to attend those faculty meetings in the future in which minority student admissions are discussed.

As part of the deal, Charles J. Christenson, professor of Business Administration, sponsored a motion which would allow his Policy and Operating Committee to invite students "to attend MBA faculty meetings in a non-voting capacity during the consideration of particular agenda topics when, in the judgment of the POC, representation of special points of view of such students might be desirable."

Christenson's motion was approved by the faculty but was placed near the bottom of the agenda-after the vote on minority student admissions had already occurred.

In other action, the Business School willraise tuition next September from $2400 to $2800, subject to the Corporation's approval. This will make the Business School Harvard's most expensive graduate school next year and will also mark the School with a higher tuition rate than any of the other leading business schools across the nation.