New Tutorial Proposals Considered by Masters

Programs for non-Honors tutorial are still "very general and very much up in the air," Elliott Perkins '23, Master of Lowell House, stated last night. Perkins and the other Masters have been considering alternative solutions to the problem since the Committee on Educational Policy asked them to investigate it last fall.

One plan currently under consideration would set up a compulsory senior tutorial on a cross-departmental basis and would allow non-Honors Seniors the option of writing a long essay and taking a general examination to regain Honors standing. Perkins described the plan as "providing a more respectable cum laude than the one in General Studies."

As the program is generally outlined, non-honors tutorial would be administered by an inter-departmental committee which each spring would announce which combinations of the five major fields--English, History, Government, Economics, and Social Relations--would be offered the following year.

The tutorial groups would be based as much as possible on House affiliations and would be composed of eight to ten students and two tutors. Students who did not elect the Honors option would take departmental divisional examinations as they have in the past.

Another program, which the Masters have not yet discussed in detail, provides a compromise to what Perkins described as the "much-debated question of whether non-Honors tutorial should be voluntary or compulsory." Under this second planed non-Honors group tutorial would be offered as a half-course for credit extended over the whole of the Junior year. Students doing well in the course could apply to take a similar program their Senior year or to re-enter honors study.

Resembles Old Plan

This alternative is very similar to the system abandoned last year by the major departments in that it puts all responsibility for the program on the departments. The only difference is that the tutorial would be given for credit and that enrollment in it would be voluntary One University official who favors such a program estimates that it would attract twenty to thirty students in each department and would thus involve the addition of only three tutor hours a week.

Although neither plan is fully outlined yet, at the moment the former seems a more likely basis for final legislation acceptable to the Faculty.