IN THE FALL OF 1971, after the tumult of the past two or three years had begun to recede, President Hallowell made one more attempt at long-range planning for the university. He called for "an examination of the major decisions that will be confronting the University in the years ahead," and projected "Tufts in 1980." John A. Dunn, Jr., Assistant to the President, prepared a retrospective paper entitled "A Look at the Horizon," in which he reviewed the changes that had grown out of the Tufts-Carnegie Self Study of the late 1950s. The president used the paper as background in presenting his annual report in 1971. (During the Hallowell administration the practice was started of preparing two reports: the President's Report to the Trustees, a public document occasionally printed in pamphlet form, such as the one in 1971; and a confidential Administrators' Report to the President, usually dealing with internal operations.)

The character and locale of the undergraduate population had changed radically in the intervening thirteen years. Tufts had become a residential rather than a commuter institution, and its students, more diverse than ever before in ethnic, social, and economic makeup, had been drawn from a much wider geographic area than ever before. The university had greatly expanded its graduate school in enrollment, course offerings, and degree programs. Salary improvements, although not spectacular, were sufficient to attract a level of faculty quality that was constantly improving. The most striking phenomenon in the curriculum of the undergraduate colleges and divisions had been enhanced flexibility; options were now so numerous that an increased responsibility rested with both faculty and administration for intelligent student advising. The structure of the university had been simplified, comparatively, involving the merger with or departure from the institution of once separately organized affiliated schools. The medical school had pioneered in its two experimental projects in Boston and in Mound Bayou, Mississippi, in combining both the educational and community service aspects of medicine. Major new physical facilities were either completed or under way. The value of the physical plant was estimated at $39 million, the same as the annual operating expenses.

The generally favorable report on reaccreditation of the institution by the New England Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools had been received by the trustees in the spring of 1970. The one major criticism was Tufts' failure to tie the three graduate professional schools (medical, dental, and Fletcher) more closely into the undergraduate environment. The reaccreditation team also recommended the preparation of a master plan for the next decade with a view to overcoming the lack of institutional coherence which they considered a weakening factor. Hallowell was clearly aware of this, and told the trustees that what was missing at Tufts was "a strong sense of... relatedness within itself, among its schools, [and] a strong sense of an undergraduate liberal education . . . [which was] at the heart of Tufts' continued success." The president, in his annual report to the trustees in 1971, reaffirmed his often-repeated conviction that the primary goal of the institution was the education of the individual student in the broadest possible sense. All research and service activities were aimed at strengthening the basic teaching function and were contributory directly to "the mainstream of the University life." This meant balanced attention to development of both the broadly integrated individual and the narrower professionalism which would inevitably develop as the student matured and progressed. This must all be achieved in an era when the moral certitudes of an earlier day were being replaced by a bewilderingly wide range of possibilities in an uncertain and rapidly changing world. The president suggested in general terms the desirability of setting "goals, strategies and major decision areas for Tufts for the decades ahead."

In order to translate these generally phrased philosophic assertions into concrete action, Hallowell announced his intention to appoint immediately an ad hoc university-wide Steering Committee (USC), advisory to him and to report by December 1972. He announced the simultaneous creation of an ad hoc Committee on Undergraduate Education (CUE), also advisory to him and to report sufficiently promptly to allow the Steering Committee to review its recommendations from a university-wide vantage point. The purpose of the CUE was "to consider the goals, mode, content and economies of undergraduate education at Tufts." One of his charges to the committee was to "try to work out more effectively the nature of liberal education in a technological society." Another task of this committee was to consider the recommendations of an outside consultant to be appointed "to study the costs and benefits to the University of providing more extensive education in the allied health professions than we now offer." The two studies were to take place

The CUE, formed in November 1971, had a specific mandate to "establish priorities and prepare recommendations with respect to undergraduate education." The committee was given wide latitude and discretion in its deliberations which included "the total environment in which undergraduate learning takes place — including admissions, student affairs, faculty selection and educational programming." It was obvious from the mandate laid down that there would be considerable overlapping in the work of the two committees. In order to assist the two committees in their deliberations and to gauge Tufts community sentiment, a 1 10-item Institutional Goals Inventory prepared by the Educational Testing Service was administered to a representative sample which included alumni and parents as well as faculty, students, and administrators. (For a copy of the questionnaire and a detailed analysis of the results, see Appendix E of the USC report.) The CUE, comprising fifteen members and headed by Dean George S. Mumford, included four deans and other administrators, eight faculty, and three students. The committee was aided by a support staff of three. The faculty and administrative personnel were heavily weighted on the side of science and engineering, with only two representing the social sciences and one representing the humanities. A member of the Classics Department, representing the latter, called attention to this bias in a minority report in which he pointedly noted that the humanities (including history) were relegated to a position "suitable only for leisure time." The great bulk of the report dealt with the curriculum, although there were extensive sections on student life, admissions, financial aid, faculty, and administrative structure. An appendix dealt with the academic calendar, which assumed adoption of year-round operation. Another included five-year financial projections which predicted a gloomy future unless year-round operation was adopted. The problems raised by the study but never satisfactorily solved were how to develop educational coherence and how to provide a sense of community. The committee avoided offering any solution to these dilemmas by deciding that their principal responsibility was "to raise questions and issues" rather than to solve problems.

For curriculum, the most innovative recommendation called for a series of "focal programs" in the first two years for all students, from which they could choose a number of alternatives. Themes or topics such as "Human Growth and Development," "Revolution,

There were predictable recommendations about the quality of student life on campus, emphasizing the existing deficiencies of dormitory, dining, and athletic facilities, and the absence of a campus center; and about augmented financial aid (with specific formulae for each year, based solely on need). There was much stress placed on increasing the diversity of the student body although the use of quotas was discouraged; tensions between black and white students were recognized. Many of the recommendations had been made in the Long-Range Planning Committee report in 1969, such as the providing of a campus center, but nothing had been done about them.

The administrative structure on the Medford campus came in for special criticism. It was considered "anachronistic, redundant, and inefficient." To simplify matters it was recommended that three deans be responsible for all undergraduate programs, faculty, and students. The existing Deans of Liberal Arts and Jackson were to be replaced by a Dean of Studies and a Dean of Academic Affairs, and the position of Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences was to be redefined. Part-time positions would include a Dean of Focal Programs and a Dean of Engineering. The committee also recommended a Dean of Doctoral Programs, although the relevance of this to undergraduate education was not made at all clear. All told, the size of the administrative bureaucracy would be slightly increased rather than reduced. However, the 27 existing standing committees (not to mention 18 ad hoc and subcommittees), with a total membership of 178 faculty and 78 administrators, could be reduced to 9 committees, with 85 faculty and 47 administrators.

Probably the most controversial recommendation of all was the creation of a single Faculty of Arts and Sciences which had also been recommended in 1969. Existing constituent faculties of Liberal Arts and Jackson, Engineering, and the Graduate School would be phased out and replaced by a unified faculty. Much of the overlapping work of several committees would become the responsibility of a faculty executive committee.

The USC, headed by Thomas Murnane, at the time Acting Dean of the School of Dental Medicine, made its report to President Hallowell in January 1973. ("Tufts: The Total University in Changing Times.") The committee consisted of twenty-one individuals besides the chairman. There were three trustees, two members from the regular administration (the Dean of the Graduate School and a vice-president), two alumni, six members of the faculty (including one from the School of Medicine and one from the Fletcher School), one graduate student, and two undergraduates. A five-person support staff headed by Dunn included a full-time staff assistant and a general editor.

Their mandate had been to study "the University as a whole," with projections for the next decade, and to investigate every nook and cranny of the institution. After accomplishing this, the USC was to prepare a set of recommendations and priorities for review and consideration by the president and the board of trustees. The threefold task of the USC was an ambitious and complex one: to familiarize themselves with the various planning studies made in the recent past as well as three currently under way, including that of the CUE; to consider the findings of other groups dealing primarily with such matters as capital resources, financial questions relating to the dental school, and the role of the graduate school; and to initiate their own studies of how to strengthen and tie more closely together the university's numerous educational programs, strengthen the faculty, review admissions policies, and enhance relationships with other institutions. As expressed by one trustee, Tufts "suffered by a lack of clear image and focus," due in part "to the conglomerate aspect and no centrality." One purpose of the studies initiated by the president was to propose remedies for these structural weaknesses.

The USC met thirty-one times after its creation in November 1971, divided itself into innumerable subcommittees, and participated in countless private conversations. Besides, it amassed a huge amount of data in the form of background and working papers and statistical information, part of which was embodied in eleven appendixes

The committee made twelve major recommendations which covered the entire spectrum of university affairs, although most dealt basically with the Medford campus. Some were restatements of the obvious which no one would be likely to challenge, and some were so controversial that their fate could be predicted almost from the very start. They were all based in some way on what were conceived to be three pressing and urgent needs: to create a teaching and learning environment capable of attracting and retaining the very best faculty and students; to create courses and programs that provided, at the same time, greater coherence and interaction than then existed; and to increase the "economic viability" of the institution. No one could fault the recommendation of an improved residential environment in Medford; closer relations than then existed between the Medford and Boston campuses; and cultivation of closer relationships among undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs. These had been advocated in season and out for years, as had cooperation with both private and public educational institutions in Massachusetts.

The majority of the recommendations dealt with internal administrative arrangements, curriculum, and the academic calendar. The office of provost needed strengthening, with particular attention to coordination of the library system, expansion of computer resources, and professional development of the faculty. The existence of combined bachelor's-master's programs, in which approximately sixty students were then enrolled, needed to be emphasized, particulary in building bridges between liberal arts and engineering. The committee recommended that the number of graduate programs in Arts and Sciences be gradually and selectively reduced, together with graduate enrollments. As Kathryn McCarthy, then Dean of the Graduate School, pointed out in a working paper appended to the report, Tufts did not have the faculty, library, laboratory facilities, or financial resources to maintain thirty-two master's programs and twenty-two doctoral programs to service an enrollment which had skyrocketed from 220 in 1958 to 800 in 1972.

The graduate program had, for the most part, become a financial albatross with which Tufts could ill afford to be burdened. External support for programs in the humanities and social sciences lagged far behind that for the natural and physical sciences and the majority of subventions for graduate students, approaching half a

The USC report echoed the profound dissatisfaction expressed by the CUE regarding the foundation and distribution requirements, the satisfaction of which comprised much of the program for most liberal arts undergraduates. There was no foundation requirement leading to literacy in mathematics, science, or technology. Disciplines by which distribution requirements could be met had become so specialized and the number of choices within each area so great that fragmentation bordering on academic anarchy was the result. In the years between the completion of the Tufts-Carnegie Self-Study and 1972, offerings in Arts and Sciences had doubled, while faculty had increased by 60 percent and student enrollments by 40 percent. Unchecked proliferation of courses, many of them specialized and attracting only a handful of students, was educationally undesirable and economically wasteful.

Use of the words "regain" and "recapture" in the explanatory comments clearly implied that "a sense of relationship and wholeness in a student's education" once existed but had been lost. The USC, without marked enthusiasm, recognized the worth of the "focal programs" recommended by the CUE but called for caution in implementing them because of "the practical problems involved." They would be interdisciplinary in nature and would be a substitute for the traditional foundation and distribution requirements.

The two requirements that sparked the greatest controversy had to do with the administrative organization of the university and the academic calendar. The USC recommended that the faculties of the College of Liberal Arts and Jackson, and the College of Engineering, and all other components of Arts and Sciences be combined into a single faculty which would entail reconstituting all committees, and making the Faculty of Arts and Sciences part of a single faculty for the entire university. While separate faculties would continue to be responsible for curricular development, admissions, and certification of degrees for such schools as Fletcher, medical, and dental, the all-university faculty would assume responsibility for graduate programs, interschool programs, and for the establishment and review of uniform university-wide tenure standards which would be under the supervision of an Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs. Hallowell did his best to promote a more coherent and coordinated university and increased interdisciplinary cooperation. And there were some signs of progress by 1972. He hailed the joint appointment of a member of the engineering faculty in the

But for the most part the faculties on the Hill stubbornly refused to consolidate, committed as they were to customary ways of doing things and jealous of their autonomy and departmental organization. The Liberal Arts and Jackson faculty voted down the recommendation that it be amalgamated with engineering. The only administrative change accepted was a minor restructuring of some committees to reduce duplication. A committee of the local AAUP chapter expressed their opposition to any modification of the existing university structure, including the creation of a university senate or council because it was "obviously contrary to general faculty sentiment." They also indicated a basic disagreement with Hallowell's educational philosophy. The president, according to his annual report to the trustees in 1973, wanted "to make good men and women and to make a good society." The AAUP wanted stress on intellectual development instead.

Undergirding almost every major recommendation of the USC were financial considerations. It was time that Tufts launched "a fund-raising effort far larger than anything it has ever undertaken." Otherwise, the vicious circle of raising tuition and/or increasing enrollments would continue until something was forced to give. The only alternative seemed to be a combination of "adding students, shifting to year-round operation, raising tuition, keeping a tight control on expenditures, and permitting some slippage in faculty-student ratios." None was really desirable. These efforts offered an opportunity only for "some breathing space in the next five years" - not long-term solutions. The committee, in their concluding remarks, made the gloomy prediction that "the next five years, with all their problems, will be less difficult than the five or ten years to follow." Stamina and resilience, the key to Tufts' survival in the past, were needed more than ever for the future.

Responses to the reports of the CUE and the USC were mixed. The most negative and emotional reactions came from the Tufts minority community, particularly from Blacks. In March 1973 they held a press conference to present their position on "the disturbing recommendations" in both reports. The USC had specified that there

The USC recommendations also generated widespread concern on the part of both faculty and students in the Fletcher School. The entire student body met in mid-March 1973 and six representatives prepared a bill of particulars in which they made unmistakably clear the grounds of their opposition. Most notably, the carrying out of the recommendation of a unified faculty would mean "an erosion of the traditional and established autonomy of the Fletcher student body, faculty, and administration." The implication was obvious to the students that the USC was attempting to make Fletcher into merely "a University department." The students were especially opposed to any recommendation in the report that would in any way alter the existing structural relations between the Fletcher School and Tufts. They took particular exception not only to the idea of a university-wide faculty but to the proposal of a central university library. Dean Gullion was aghast, as were most of the Fletcher faculty, at the whole idea of unification, and considered the idea a threat to the very existence of the school. It was the failure of the various faculties to create a university-wide faculty that Hallowell considered "our major organizational difficulty" and one of his greatest disappointments.