Accelerated Education

Along Princeton's Nassau Street undergraduates hailed each other last week with a new cry: "Are you accelerating?" Acceleration was becoming a campus byword, for as they opened a new term this week most U.S. colleges began a speeded-up program that cut their four-year course to three years or less.

At Princeton, 70% of the students elected the shorter course. Surveying the nation, the Association of American Colleges found that 89% of the colleges had already plumped for year-round operation to carry out the accelerated program. Women's colleges made up most of the non-speeding 11%. By this week a new collegiate pattern had taken shape:

Admission. Matriculants now can enter many colleges in February, June or September. Some colleges admit students before they finish high school: e.g., Maryland's St. John's College (100 classics), which accepts nongraduates if they pass entrance examinations in English, mathematics and a foreign language.

Duration. Most colleges are now on a three-semester system (fall & winter, spring, summer) and students can get their degrees in from two and a third to four years (depending on whether they study summers). Professional schools have decided to admit collegians without a bachelor's degree, cut their course to three years (medicine) or two (law). Vacations, including the Christmas holidays, will be cut to four weeks a year all told.

Cost. Students will save on tuition (because it is lower for summer sessions), board & room. (Estimated total saving for the two-and-a-third-year college course at Harvard: $400.) But they will pay more per year, a serious problem to many a working student. Last week a commission appointed by the nation's college educators at a Baltimore meeting last month drafted a plan to present to Congress. Object: an appropriation which would give needy students an allowance for their college education. The allowance would be bigger than under the present National Youth Administration plan which gives them $10 to $20 a month.

Curriculum. To prepare their students for Army & Navy commissions, colleges have introduced a host of new military and allied courses, among them: military geography (TIME, Jan. 19), map interpretation, chemistry of explosives, camouflage, electricity, radio, meteorology, aerial photography, navigation, military law, Japanese, Military German, Russian.

R.O.T.C. Colleges would like R.O.T.C. units, and the Government support that goes with them. Some have even urged that the Government use them as military academies, an offer which the Navy accepted in the case of four universities last week. But the Army and Navy can spare no instructors for leisurely R.O.T.C. courses. Consequently, some colleges are serving up bootleg military training. University of Chicago has a course in military fundamentals (artillery mathematics, military photography, marksmanship) in which it claims to give the basic R.O.T.C. course in half the time.

Athletics. To make their boys physically fit, most colleges plan to boom varsity and intramural sports. Some (notably Harvard, Dartmouth) have already decided to let freshmen play on varsity teams; ma,ny another is expected to follow suit. A few college presidents (e.g., Yale's Charles Seymour) announced plans for compulsory physical training for all undergraduates. Columbia, launching such a program for every freshman and sophomore, dropped softball, badminton, fencing and bowling, decided to concentrate on tougher sports: boxing, wrestling, swimming, long-distance running.

Parties. To dance or not to dance is an issue on many a campus. Dartmouth canceled its famed Winter Carnival; a few colleges resolved to get along without name bands; Princeton decided to have one band instead of two at its Junior Prom; the Princetonian inveighed against plans to hold the Spring House Parties as usual.

Future. Clearest statement of the enrollment problem facing U. S. colleges came from Harvard's President James Bryant Conant. He predicted a sharp decline, pointed out that enrollment in British universities was 50% of normal. Such a drop at Harvard, he said, would mean a $1,700,000 annual loss in tuition revenue. Dr. Conant was also concerned by a possibility of undemocratic selection of U.S. military officers: while the Army & Navy look to the colleges to supply most of their officers, poor boys will find it increasingly hard to go to college.

Dr. Conant's proposal: let the Government select promising boys in high school, send them on to college for both military and academic training at Government expense.

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