Two More Years

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences began in May to restructure its system of financial aid for graduate students. In March, a committee of professors chaired by anthropologist Peter Ellison, Ph.D. '83, reported "rising concern...particularly in the humanities and social sciences" over the financial support made available to Harvard's graduate students. Although 56 percent of those offered admission for graduate study in arts and sciences choose to attend, peer institutions' aid packages "are often both higher in level and longer in duration."

The report ranked Harvard at the midpoint among 11 schools, with a student stipend of $11,590 per year (MIT was highest, at $13,275, and Yale lowest, at $10,200). But only Brown, with one-year offers, had a fellowship term below Harvard's two-year standard; the other institutions guaranteed support for an average of four years or more.

Adhering to their mandate to advance "cost-neutral" recommendations, the committee suggested that Harvard make four-year finan- cial-aid offers at the time of admission, largely by making anticipated teaching fellowships part of the aid package. During the faculty's debate, Philip A. Kuhn '54, Ph.D. '64, Higginson professor of history and of East Asian languages and civilizations, expressed concern that guaranteeing fellowships might erode the quality of teaching offered to undergraduates--a major point of discussion. Dean of undergraduate education William Todd, the Reisinger professor of Slavic languages and literatures, said he saw two benefits for College students in the proposed change: more predictable course selection, since the supply of teaching fellows and assignments could be planned better; and "renewed attention to the preparation of graduate teaching fellows." And so the measure was adopted.

Left open for future consideration were changes in aid that would not be "cost neutral." The Ellison committee saw a need for "vigorous fund-raising efforts...on the scale of Stanford's, a $200-million endowment to generate $8 million annually, to close the gap between current resources and current need." (The University Campaign has targeted $32 million for graduate financial aid.) President Neil L. Rudenstine told the faculty that raising such sums "is the hardest sell there is," because those graduate students who enter academia do not make a natural "philanthropic constituency" with adequate means to fully fund such programs. But he pledged to make graduate financial aid a priority of future Harvard fundraising efforts.