Word: generalized
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...would have been uncharacteristic of Lowell to stop while things were going his way, and indeed, he did not. In his annual report for 1908-09 Lowell wrote, "It may be hoped that under the new rules for the choice of electives, some form of general examinations... on the principal field of study will be more commonly required." For the new president, the suggestion was a cautiously worded one, but it was only the beginning. Lowell fully believed that students forgot most of what they had learned in a course as soon as the final examination was out of sight...
Since no undergraduate department would take him up on the idea of general examinations. Lowell turned to the graduate schools. The Medical School was the first to think favorably of his plan and accordingly, in 1911, the graduating class there took the first compulsory generals in University history. The next year the Divinity School followed suit, and two years later, convinced by enthusiastic reports from the two graduate schools, the undergraduate department of History, Government, and Economics began to require generals. Within ten years, President Lowell was able to report with evident satisfaction that all departments except Chemistry and Engineering...
...Lowell, who had already established a wide reputation for being anything but complacent, set out on yet another academic crusade--tutorial. One of the most formidable criticisms of his plan for general examinations had been that the average student couldn't pass such an examination without help in preparing it. A tutorial system like that of Oxford or Cambridge was obviously the answer, but the University couldn't afford a staff of new tutors...
Lowell was convinced, however, that the general examinations and tutorial were essential to his overall plan of rousing students from their intellectual apathy, so he decided that since the University couldn't have both quality and quantity in its instruction, it would have quality. Accordingly, as the College budget increased from year to year, he held the number of Courses to a minimum and used the extra money gradually to hire a complete staff of departmental tutors...
Thus in the first decade of his administration, Lowell had reshaped the pattern of undergraduate study and laid the foundations for a comparable change in student attitude. With the new requirements for concentration and distribution, tutorial, and general examinations, undergraduates found their academic life substantially changed. The would-be dissipators could no longer expect to graduate on a few weeks of annual cramming and only the very industrious could hope to graduate in three years...