VES Funding

To the Editors of The Crimson:

I am among the 24 students whose application to transfer to the Visual and Environmental Studies concentration this fall was denied. The reason for this, according to the VES department, is a shortage of faculty and teaching space, caused by insufficient funding from the central administration. If it can be considered the administrators' responsibility to distribute funds to best meet student needs, then in the case of VES they have, I believe, distressingly failed to meet this responsibility. Denying students such a fundamental educational privilege as a free selection of a field of study is a major hindrance to academic growth. I wish the administration to be fully ware of the impact its decisions have on students.

The situation reveals an apparent misplacement of priorities in Harvard's educational program. By refusing to adjust funding to accommodate long-term changes in student interests (VES has been oversubscribed for at least five years, according to the department). Harvard is forcing its students to conform to a pre-ordained distribution of fields rather than responding to changes in educational needs. Whether a students concentrates (or takes a course) in history or VES should be a decision based on the student's own educational objectives, not on the monetary cost of teaching the subject. Yet by under funding relatively costly departments such as VES, Harvard is preventing interested students from studying in these fields, and forces them to concentrate in subjects that are more cheaply taught. Although this may be a sound budgetary practice, it is hardly appropriate as an educational policy.

A final effect is of a more general nature. When VES is insufficiently funded, the department is unable to give adequate attention to students other than admitted concentrators. This creates the impression, however unintended, that these students are an unwanted burden on the department's human and physical resources--an atmosphere that is certainly not conducive to the enthusiastic pursuit of knowledge upon which a university is based.

I hope the administration will appreciate these effects when it makes its future budgeting decisions. Tony Simon '85

This letters was originally sent to Dean Sidney Verba.