The Undergraduate Chair

An alumnus who remembers the words of President Tucker quoted him recently in a letter to me: "If any of you boys came to Dartmouth to get a training, you are in the wrong place.... You should have gone to a training school." In line with this view, my correspondent commented, "It seems regrettable.... I very rarely hear or read anything about [the value of] education for itself.... I am well aware [however,] that I am out of step with most of today's thinking..."

Apparently not far out of step, at least so several students feel. Graduate school pressures are causing a study-more-enjoy-it-less syndrome, and some say the pursuit of the traditional liberal arts is waning.

Greg Pulis, a senior, Glee Club president and business manager of the Dartmouth Aires, was a Russian major, but switched to history after he returned from the Leningrad foreign study program. "Russian was an entirely new experience for me," says Pulis, "It opened up a whole new world to me, and I enjoyed it. The Russian langauage brought me very close to a different people and culture.

"When I got back, though, I started thinking about career plans, especially law school. I'd never really thought about grades all that much, but then I looked through various law school catalogues and admissions criteria. I'd done well with Russian, but not extremely well, and versus what I needed, I felt I had to get my grades up. I felt more secure grade-wise with history. That's no slur on the department; I've always done well with it, and enjoyed it before I came to Hanover."

"I'd do the Russian major again," Pulis reflects, "and work harder at it. But it scares me to think that students would not do something like that for the sake of their grades. In a liberal arts institution, one should take education and all the other experiences for their own sake. There's nothing wrong with studying a lot, but one should be able to take part in all that Dartmouth has to offer, rather than take courses for the grades and limit one's experiences here."

Is Dartmouth a training school? "Not in the College's mind, but in the student mind perhaps there is that feeling. Dartmouth has to cater to student feelings. If we're concerned about graduate schools, the College will get organized for that. For instance, the change to the four-point grading scale and the institution of plus and minus grades makes grades more easily convertible for grad schools - besides reducing whatever grade inflation there is here.

"It's a pure pressure thing," Pulis says. "A lot of capable and motivated students come here. And they all look for positions of greatest self-fulfillment after graduation. That kind of group creates an interest in certain professions. If five students are interested in one thing, the sixth will consider getting on the bandwagon. People get carried away by the applications game."

"The society adds to this pressure too. Professions like law, medicine, engineering, business are secure things to do," explains Pulis. "They lead to money and prestige, a respectable mold."

"If a student gets caught early, he will play a pre-professional game, basing his courses and activities on getting into grad schools. The idea of needing that grade is always there. I can see it around me. It seems lots more students are calling themselves pre-law and pre-med students, and starting their post-graduate careers early. It shows itself in the feeling you get in the back of your mind about whether you should do this or that, how it will affect your grades, and how it will look on your application."

Special majors and foreign study programs do not "look good," law school applicants have been told. Law and medicine are the most popular graduate fields for Dartmouth students in recent years. About half the class of 1973 is now attending grad school; 86 members are at law school and 59 are at medical school, according to the Office of Student Services. The 50 per cent figure reflects a decline in graduate school attendance from a high of 70 per cent in the mid-sixties - the result of the end of the military draft. However, both law and medical school aspirants now have student-run organizations on campus to serve their specific needs.

The Daniel Webster Legal Society Was founded last year. Its current president, Tom Eggleston '74, a basketball player and student representative on the Alumni Council, comments: "It's very difficult to enjoy all Dartmouth has to offer, but more and more law schools are coming to respect a broad liberal arts education."

"There's an awful lot of studying going on around here. Most students, as there is no actual pre-law program here, go after the professors and not the subjects." Of course, easier courses and professors help keep the grades up. A deeper question, though, is whether the actual existence of a pre-law society encourages the trend away from education for its own sake toward purely professional modes of life. Eggleston doesn't think so.

"We're out to discuss different aspects of the law; the speakers we invite reflect the various types of law being practiced today. We hope we provide some sort of service to get students better informed about what 'the law' really is when they say they're going into law."

"Dartmouth is a real leader in the liberal arts approach to education," says Eggleston, "but still I've noticed a great proliferation in college offices dealing with career planning since I came here."

Joshua Warach '76 heads the premedical society which has been at Dartmouth for a number of years. In previous years, medical school admissions was the major focus of the group. This year emphasis has been on issues the doctor faces in everyday practice, such as euthanasia and paramedicine.

"There is a pre-med program here, and it allows a few elective courses which almost have to be easier to permit enough work on the pre-med courses. It's almost criminal to have students go through here without any appreciation of the humanities and social sciences," says Warach, "but that's what happening."

"People are dedicated to studying, but with very little real excitement about their work, it's mostly directed for the grades. They work hard, but give little thought to what they're studying, and this is more apparent this year.

"In any case," wrote the alumnus, at my age, I can't do anything about it. Perhaps you, as a young man and even especially as an undergraduate, can do something about it."