Shakedown at Oakland

In a spate of oratory, giant (26,000 students) Michigan State University, long known as an "ag and tech" institution, three years ago launched a rigorous liberal arts branch for "rebels with clear minds and uncowed consciences." With mixed hope and skepticism, U.S. educators have since watched the new college at Oakland, 60 miles east of M.S.U.'s main East Lansing campus. Can Oakland live up to its publicity?

Oakland began with a spacious, 2,000-acre campus, a fat-free academic diet, and a spartan atmosphere of no dormitories, fraternities, sororities or organized athletics (TIME, Sept. 28, 1959). It had one major drawback: serving almost entirely as a commuter college in a low-income area, it was expected to demand Harvard-level performance from poorly prepared youngsters.

Intellectual Compact. All this got Oakland into trouble from the start. Students looking forward to the glamour of college complained that no-frills Oakland was "a very lonely place, like a concrete cell." It was even lonelier after the first quarter, when one grade out of every six was an F. Though the school magnanimously allowed flunkers to repeat courses--and hence got charged with junking its intellectual aims--nearly 400 of the original freshman class of 570 have dropped out. The few hard-working survivors on the vast campus endured everything from overblown rumors of faculty dissension to the news that the money-strapped Michigan state legislature had cut Oakland's budget to the bone.

Yet Oakland's basic idea still had vitality. With two new starting classes added to the remnants of the first, Oakland's enrollment has now grown to 1,017 and its young faculty (average age: 34) has risen from 25 to 54 members, 90% of them with Ph.D.s. Last fall the trimester system was adopted, allowing a scant seven weeks of vacation (v. 19 at most colleges) and permitting graduation in 2 2/3 years. Last week Chancellor Durward Varner jauntily described his school as "a compact model which provides a rich intellectual experience."

Despite its average students, Oakland retains high standards. "We push the students just as hard as we dare," says Physics Professor William Hammerle, 34. Adds Economist Kenneth Roose, who once taught at academically rugged Oberlin: "The students are not as capable as Oberlin's, but their performance is as good. They're more highly motivated."

No Place to Play. Course requirements are rugged. Of 32 courses needed for graduation, 17 are required subjects--from art, music and literature to government and foreign languages (Russian, Chinese, Spanish or French). Under a new "little-college" program, 20-odd students meet eight hours a week with two professors to discuss Western institutions and literature, from Plato to Faulkner. Though it still owns only 25,000 books, Oakland has just opened a new $1,500,000 library with space for 750,000 volumes. In hopes of boosting out-of-state enrollment to 25%, the school has built four new dormitories.

In three years, Oakland aims to have 2,500 students, can accommodate them without adding a brick to its $8,000.000 plant. Originally, the target was 10,000 students by 1970. Now the school plays down such ambitions. Bigness, says Varner, "is not one of our objectives." Excellence is, despite Oakland's shakedown troubles. "You don't come here to play," sighs one junior. Adds Susan Bierstein. editor of the student newspaper: "I wouldn't be anywhere else."

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