In Union There Is Quality

Like corner grocers fighting supermarkets, small U.S. colleges suffer in the competition with universities such as Harvard and California. Big schools can meet the rising costs of top faculties and expensive plants; most small colleges are out of the running--if they run alone. This year more and more of them are sharing facilities and faculties that few can afford on their own. The interesting result is a new pattern in U.S. higher education: federations of small colleges across the country that give all the appearance of embryo universities.

The advantages have long been apparent to Philadelphia's Bryn Mawr, Haverford and Swarthmore. Years ago, they began swapping students and professors. Now Bryn Mawr alone offers geology, cutting costs for the other schools. Haverford and Bryn Mawr share sociology, cutting costs for Swarthmore, which, in turn, is strongest in psychology. The schools snag high-priced professors by splitting their salaries. Last year they also got a $136,000 Ford Foundation grant for Asian studies, a project too ambitious for any of them to have handled alone.

Four-Color Ph.D. In Massachusetts' Connecticut River Valley, the girls of Smith and Mount Holyoke once shared only the men of Amherst. In 1951 the schools began cautiously buying books with the nearby University of Massachusetts. Now students at any of the four campuses (total enrollment: 11,100) can take courses at the others. The four have a joint astronomy department, share their first history of science professor. Last year they opened a common educational FM radio station, conferred their first Ph.D. degree (on a candidate whose hood bore colors representing all four of the schools). If they can raise the needed $16 million, they hope to build an entire new experimental college for 1,000 students.

"Cooperation is the salvation of private colleges," says President Rufus Clement of Atlanta (Negro) University. He heads the Atlanta University Center, which boasts six member colleges. Instead of six weak libraries, they have one strong one of 200,000 volumes. Four share a central-heating plant; all use their one best Shakespeare professor, physics and chemistry departments. They share dormitories, athletic fields, and may even integrate their bookkeeping. The setup lures increasingly better students (including some whites), makes Atlanta the top Negro educational center in the U.S.

The Center Pattern. The university center, small colleges nourished by nearby universities, is one major pattern of confederation. Other centers:

> Atlanta's mostly white University Center in Georgia, with eight members, ranging from the University of Georgia to Agnes Scott College. Among its activities: joint research in science and humanities, grants to professors for improving classroom teaching, a central catalogue of the 2,500,000 volumes in the members' libraries.

> The University Center in Nashville, with three members (Vanderbilt University, George Peabody and Scarritt Colleges), which boasts a $2,000,000 Joint University Library of nearly 400,000 volumes. The group recently began working with Nashville's city government to expand its three campuses in U.S.-supported urban-renewal projects. Parallel plans were launched by three Negro campuses--Fisk University, Meharry Medical College, Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial State University--which comprise Nashville's second university center.

> Pennsylvania's Harrisburg Area Center for Higher Education, which was born of the desire of two small colleges, Elizabethtown and Lebanon Valley, to enrich their lean academic diets. They now offer joint courses and degrees, have uniform tuition and faculty pay. Moreover, since 1954 they have linked up with three universities (Temple, Penn State, Pennsylvania), a tie that allows the colleges for the first time to offer graduate work.

> The University Center in Virginia, begun in 1948 with nine Virginia campuses, and now up to 21 members, ranging from tiny (400 men) Hampden-Sydney College to the big (4,670 men) University of Virginia. Launched by the Rockefeller General Education Board, the center has set up cooperative professorships and a joint adult-education program, plans this year to share portable scientific equipment. It has given Virginia scholars nearly $150,000 in research grants, imported a procession of lively lecturers, from Julian Huxley to Colin Wilson (The Outsider). The center's premise: small colleges "cannot go it alone and provide quality education."

The Association Pattern. Another widespread pattern of confederation is associations of coequal colleges. Typical is Associated Colleges of the Midwest, headed by Oberlin's former Dean Blair Stewart, who says: "We can do things together that we can't do separately." Stewart's ten colleges (Beloit, Carleton, Coe, Cornell, Grinnell, Knox, Lawrence, Monmouth, Ripon, St. Olaf) are jointly evaluating new techniques in foreign-language teaching and sending professors and students to Argonne National Laboratory for training. The schools are already saving money by purchasing insurance together. Others:

> The Great Lakes Association of twelve colleges: Albion, Antioch, Denison, De-Pauw, Earlham, Hope, Kalamazoo, Kenyon, Oberlin, Ohio Wesleyan, Wooster and Wabash. They boast 1,200 faculty members and 16,000 students--"quite a sizable university." Under way are plans for cooperating on everything from admissions and business operations to libraries and a marine biology station on the Atlantic Coast.

> The College Center of the Finger Lakes in Corning, N.Y., with five highly dissimilar members: Alfred University (1,400 students), Corning Community College (350), Elmira College (800 women), Hobart and William Smith Colleges (1,040) and Pennsylvania's Mansfield State College (880). Sponsor is the Corning Glass Works, which hopes to recruit more scientists by enlivening culture in the isolated region.

Colleges may also get together to fill one specific need. An example is the recently organized Midwest College Council, with twelve members including some drawn from both the Associated Colleges of the Midwest and the Great Lakes Association. Because they have more than enough Midwest applicants, they hope to recruit Eastern youngsters. As Ripon's President Fred O. Pinkham puts it: "The mists rising from the Hudson River seem to obscure the view of the rich educational experiences awaiting students on the other side."*

Where federalism can lead is perhaps clearest at California's five Associated Colleges, this month renamed The Claremont Colleges. They started near Los Angeles in 1887 with coed Pomona, which in the 1920s decided to curb enrollment (now 1,085) by launching autonomous affiliates--Claremont University College (now 650 graduate students), Scripps (300 women), the postwar Claremont Men's College (450) and science-engineering Harvey Mudd College (230). On the group's 500 acres is room for seven more colleges.

The current five share everything from gifts and dormitories to one big library and a common business office. They attract top professors because they offer both graduate and undergraduate teaching. The result is more quality at less cost, and something more. Provost Robert J. Bernard calls it "the element of competition--the highest level of performance becomes the standard of performance, not only in teaching and research, but even down to competitive sports."

* Widening the range of college choice is the low fare begun this month by twelve major airlines for passengers aged 12 to 21. The new fare from New York to Chicago is $27.60, v. $42.13 regular tourist class; from New York to San Francisco, $94.30, v. $120.07 tourist class.

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