THE OHIO SIX

IN their evangelistic campaign to build a Christian community across the U.S. from the Atlantic to the Pacific, Protestant churches of the 19th century used the denominational college as an intellectual stronghold. By the Civil War era, the churches had founded some 40 colleges in Ohio alone, to ensure for the state a Christian core and to train the ministers who plodded after the frontiersmen across the plains.

Empty treasuries and denominational rivalry have killed off all but 20 of these Ohio colleges. Of the survivors, educators often group six together because of their high academic standing in the liberal arts and sciences: Kenyon College (1824), Denison University (1832), Oberlin College (1833), Ohio Wesleyan University (1842), Antioch College (1853), and the College of Wooster (1866). Small and selective, the six produce a surprisingly large percentage of graduate students; e.g., 60% of Oberlin's male students take advanced work. Because of facts like these, no similar intrastate group of colleges and universities is more widely respected among the nation's educators than the Ohio Six (see color pictures).

Fashions in Christianity. Each of the six is true to its Christian origins in its fashion, but the fashions vary widely from campus to campus. Methodist Ohio Wesleyan and Presbyterian Wooster still have formal ties to their mother churches, still make chapel attendance compulsory. At Wooster, which annually sends 10% to 15% of its graduates into the ministry, an aide to President Howard F. Lowry explains: "Christianity is not something we just talk about; it's something we live here. You simply do not have a liberal education when you divorce learning from man's deepest inquiry."

Religion is less in the air at Kenyon (Episcopalian), although the college has its own divinity school, and its 500 students are required to attend chapel. A faculty member has defined the place of religion as "a part of education, like English, biology and math, but certainly a more important part than the others." Despite these points, one official of Kenyon frankly admits: "The Episcopalians and the other major denominations have fellowship groups which are sneered at by about half the campus."

The campuses differ about as widely on extracurricular activities, although all six de-emphasize intercollegiate athletics. Kenyon, the only men's college of the six, invites girls by the busload for its dances, but half the student body at Baptist Denison (1,300) and Ohio Wesleyan (2,000) is female. Wooster has no national fraternities, but Kenyon has eight, and 90% of the student body at Denison belong to fraternities or sororities. At Wooster the Presbyterian Church controls the administration; at Oberlin (no church affiliation) the faculty is the big wheel on campus, even sets salaries (top for a full professor: $11,000, highest among the six schools).

An Ordered Diet. In the classroom, the six schools require comprehensive liberal-arts and science courses, then give students a chance to do independent work if they are willing and able. "We don't allow our students to shop cafeteria style," says Dr. A. Blair Knapp, Denison's chain-smoking, crew-cut president. Since 1948 Denison has fed its students a heavy diet of such broad courses as "Basic Philosophic and Religious Ideas" and "History of Western Civilization."

Wooster has taken an extreme stand on independent work: all students, regardless of major or grades, are required to complete a project that runs through their junior and senior years. Before graduating, the Wooster senior must pass finals in his regular courses, complete either a senior essay or a special project on his independent work, then hurdle a comprehensive, six-hour written test in his major field.

Such rugged academic programs attract crack high-school graduates to all six schools. "We discourage any student who just wants a roof over his head for four years," says Oberlin's President William E. Stevenson. Oberlin gets 75% of its students from outside Ohio, has been called the best coed college in the nation. Each spring, talent scouts from top graduate schools show up to recruit leading seniors. Says Stevenson: "If Oberlin recommends them, they get off to a fine start." Still, Oberlin's high standards have one built-in drawback: the students sometimes become smugly complacent about their intellectual superiority. Cracks one Ohio Wesleyan vice president: "Oberlin gets the valedictorians. I'll settle for the next two or three in the class."

"A Little Unnerving." Of the six lively colleges, the liveliest is Antioch (no church affiliation), the able, articulate rebel against academic convention. "This is the most exciting campus in America," boasts President Samuel Gould. "We can actually try out ideas in education. If they fall flat, there's no one to claw you to bits."

The American college student, argues Gould, "doesn't do half of what he could be doing, and not much can be done about it if everyone marches by squads." To make sure each of his students marches alone, Gould this fall is starting a free elective system so complex that it will require the beginning student to take some six hours of indoctrination lectures. This program dovetails with Antioch's famous "study-plus-work" plan, which alternates classroom work on the campus with full-time off-campus jobs aimed at helping the student's "personal development, his general education and his vocational training." One loyal employer of Antioch students: the Columbus Citizen. "It's a little unnerving," notes one staffer. "When the Antioch kids aren't sharpening their pencils or going after coffee, they're sitting in the corner reading Plato's Dialogues."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.