And Gen Ed May Need Changes

When the report of the University Committee on the Objectives of General Education in a Free Society appeared in July 1945,the academic community across the nation welcomed it with open arms.

The report detailed the failure of the educational system to provide general knowledge at the high school and college level, and proposed a solution in the form of general education courses, the structure of which remains basically unchanged today at Harvard and at many other colleges across the nation.

But the system apparently has grown as tattered in the intervening years as the copies of the report itself, and this week Dean Rosovsky proposed that a new committee be formed to reconsider the issues discussed in the report, as well as undergraduate education as a whole.

The original report took 12 Harvard and Radcliffe faculty members and administrators two years and $60,000 to complete; its acceptance ended the reign of the free-elective system established under Charles W. Eliot, president of the University from 1869 to 1909.

Just what the new committee--which will be appointed by this summer--will recommend is uncertain; about all Rosovsky said about the new report was, "It is time to reestablish a consensus that will last another 20 years."

But President Bok said this week that a new report could have broad effects on a system of undergraduate education in America that is in "substantial disarray."

"Any really strong, persuasive statement of the purposes and aims of undergraduate education as a whole would have enormous influence," Bok said.

It also seems likely that Rosovsky's new report will encourage considerable input from students--if only because that failing by its predecessor raised considerable controversy among undergraduates in 1945.