Oxford on the Pacific

On the University of California's eight colossal campuses, some classes are as big as some colleges--600 or 700 students Now comes a dramatically different campus, scaled to intimate living and learning Ihe new University of California at Santa Cruz will eventually consist of 20 small liberal arts colleges like Amherst or Swarthmore and about ten graduate schools. Each will have about 600 students, and each will have its own traditions. The idea borrows from Oxford Vale, Harvard, and California's Claremont "cluster" of private colleges, which includes Scnpps and Pomona

Santa Cruz could easily have been another monolith like Berkeley or U.C.L.A; it is one of three new branches of the California empire, each of them to be bigger than for example, private Stanford. What clinched the new plan was the stunning 2,000 acres of redwood forests and limestone quarries overlooking Monterey Bay, loo miles south of San Francisco Ihe university bought the land, settled loo years ago by Rancher Henry Cowell lor a rock-bottom $1,000 an acre.

The man who did the rest is burly Dean McHenry, 53, a political scientist longtime close friend of Clark Kerr president of the university. Once roommates at Stanford, the two married Stanford girls who had also been roommates Kerr first made McHenry the university's statewide planner then the new chancellor of Santa Cruz. McHenry's aim, as Kerr it, is a campus that "seems small as it grows larger."

Santa Cruz will have a core area with a ' library, science labs and audio center beaming TV lectures to surrounding colleges. The colleges, each with its own small library, classrooms, dormitories and dining halls (coats and ties at dinner), will rise in clusters of two or three at various distances from the core Liberal arts will dominate the university especially art, music, writing and foreign languages (sparked by the nearby Army Language School). But starting with Cowel College in 1965, each school will also take its own academic tack--social science for Cowell, natural science, economics and public affairs for the others that will be built over three decades. Stressing seminars and tutorials, the colleges will have heir own faculty "fellows" but also share them with other colleges in a setup that big university departments. Also frowned on: fraternities, bigtime football and cars on campus (bicycles will be permitted).

Chancellor McHenry should have no trouble getting students. Santa Cruz is remote, offers few jobs for those who must earn-and-learn. But the expected cost will still be only about $1,500 a year And of all California campuses, says Present Kerr. Santa Cruz "may attract the most adventurous "

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