Speedup at Pittsburgh

While colleges across the U.S. took their well-deserved ease last week, one school was almost as busy as during the normal school year. At the University of Pittsburgh, classrooms and dorms were filled; the student-union lounge and the cafeteria clattered with noise. The Pitt Players were rehearsing The Solid Gold Cadillac, and such visitors as Poet Stanley Kunitz and Dancer Ruth St. Denis were coming in to lecture. Reason for the activity: Pitt is experimenting with a novel "trimester" system that keeps the campus humming eleven months of the year. As the number of students seeking a college education grows by leaps and bounds, Pitt (normal enrollment: 15,000) cannot possibly keep up without a huge--and much too costly--expansion program. But by educating its students faster, in much the same way as World War II's acceleration programs, the school hopes to find a way out.

Careful Planning. Masterminded by Pitt's dynamic Chancellor Edward H. Litchfield, the trimester system was started last fall for the freshman and sophomore classes. Juniors and seniors will be included in the program in the fall of

1960, graduate students in the fall of 1961. The year is divided into three semesters instead of the standard two. Each semester runs 15 weeks: September through the middle of December, January through the second week in April, the last week of April through the first week of August. Students in the plan get a month's breather after the third semes ter, then start in again. Students and teachers both may take either two or three semesters each year. If they choose three, students can finish college, go on to graduate school and embark on a profession while they are still quite young. As for the teachers, they can either earn one-third more money each year or, by working only two of the shortened semesters, find more time for research and travel. So far, Pitt has had no trouble signing up faculty members to staff the program.

To make it work smoothly takes plenty of careful planning. Pitt is busily revising its curriculum for trimester students, is splitting up courses traditionally tied together on a two-semester basis, e.g., Trig 1, Trig 2. To the horror of the students, exams have been squeezed into the regular schedule of each semester, instead of being allotted a week of their own. Pitt is also working on state agencies to revise the professional requirements for graduates. A law student at Pitt, for example, could finish law school in two years, but the Pennsylvania State Board of Bar Examiners has required three years of law school up to now. Intercollegiate sports are another problem. Some first-year graduate students at Pitt will be the equivalent of fourth-year undergraduates elsewhere, but as matters now stand, N.C.A.A. rules bar all graduate students from competition. Says Litchfield, who hopes to persuade the N.C.A.A. to waive its requirements: "You shouldn't penalize institutions willing to experiment."

No Time to Fool Around. Pitt also has a sizable public relations job to do on its students. When the trimester plan was first suggested in 1957, a poll showed that two-thirds of the students were opposed. Many feared an assembly line education. Wrote Sophomore Marcia Sandra Casar to the Pittsburgh Press this spring: "Is this education or automation? We study to jam material into our brain, empty the material into an examination paper, and rush on to the next subject, forgetting all we have previously learned." But now that the youngsters have had a chance to try it out for ten months--and see how much they really can retain--they are starting to come around. Pitt's administration would have been quite happy if 2,500 students had enrolled for the third semester this summer. Actual enrollment: 5,026. Says Liberal Arts Student Pat Bachman: "Sure, there may be more pressure. But it makes us more conscious of our responsibilities. We know we don't have time to play around."

The trimester plan is still experimental, but the first results are so encouraging that Pitt has just held a conference to explain the system to educators from 55 U.S. schools faced with the same problems. The University of Pennsylvania, Penn State, the University of Michigan, Temple and other colleges are considering trimester plans, and Pitt has received letters from better than 100 other colleges asking for information. Says Chancellor Litchfield: "The results of this pilot run have come off amazingly well. Much better than we thought or had any right to think."

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