SEVEN-YEAR ITCH

In its 123 years the Harvard Law School has seldom been without a representative on the Supreme Court bench, and in the last decade Law School men have penetrated into many key administrative posts in Washington. When he left his job as S. E. C. chief and took over the reins in Langdell Hall three years ago, Dean Landis recognized this trend by instituting sweeping curricular reforms designed to emphasize training for government administration. Now not wholly satisfied with the education of students entering the Law School, the dynamic Dean has fathered the seven-year combined law-college curriculum, designed to integrate the study of law and the other social sciences.

Under this plan, which awaits approval by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, a selected group of students will spend three years in college, taking widely distributed courses. In their fourth year they will enter the Law School, follow the standard curriculum there for two years, and spend their last two years combining the third year of Law School work with advanced work in Government and Economics.

Not all Faculty members are as enthusiastic about the plan as Dean Landis and the Law School. Glancing apprehensively over their shoulders at universities where graduate schools have relentlessly muscled in on the colleges, some see in the seven-year plan the beginning of the end for a liberal college education at Harvard. But when they take this position, they are overlooking the fact that the required distribution assures the seven-year student of a broader and more liberal education than is gleaned by many Harvard undergraduates.

To the undergraduate, too, the new plan poses problems; in his Freshman year he will be asked to enlist for a tough seven-year term which robs him of his last year in college. This program is not for football captains and P. B. H. presidents. Rather it is designed to train a small group of students seriously aiming for Washington -- the future Corcorans and Landises -- to exercise "an intellectual leadership more adequate to the difficulties of the times."