Heaven at Hampshire

The U.S. has a rich tradition of experimental colleges that start with high ideals but soon drift into dogmatism, anarchy or extinction. Massachusetts' seven-month-old Hampshire College hopes to be different. Created by the academic establishment, which vows to make it work, the school is thriving as a model of well-planned radicalism.

Founded by its well-known neighbors (Amherst. Smith, Mount Holyoke, the University of Massachusetts), Hampshire is their testing ground and showcase for lively ideas. To revamp admission standards, the college does not require high school diplomas. Of this year's first 268 students, 42 had top College Board scores of between 700 and 800, but another 28 got in with low scores of 300 to 500. Hampshire invites applicants to submit "anything that can tell us something about yourself." Last year it received hundreds of odd ities ranging from homemade rugs to loaves of bread. The winners were chosen, says Admissions Director Van Halsey, partly for such personal qualities as "a tolerance for ambiguity, a lot of self-confidence, and some self-direction."

Self-Teaching. Once accepted, Hampshire students can take a year off before entering college. But the campus, atop a high meadow overlooking the Connecticut River valley, is hard to stay away from. The one dorm constructed so far is coed and co-genus: pets are permitted. Hiking trips substitute for intercollegiate athletics. The college inaugural convocation included a kite-flying festival--and a recent brochure spoofs the lack of campus history by putting photographs of the event in Victorian-style frames. Students are not labeled freshmen, sophomores, juniors or seniors. Instead, they can spend as long as five years taking courses in three "divisions"--the first stressing techniques of advanced learning, the second concentrating on one or more disciplines, the third consisting of an independent study project. The only requirements are one term in "human development," ranging from sexual roles to the I Clung, plus another in "language and communication," a rubric for topics from grammar to the possibilities of "extraterrestrial intelligence."

Seeking new ways to goad restless students, Hampshire is brimful of "relevant" interdisciplinary studies. One environmental course, for example, pulls together the geography of Mount Washington, the works of Thoreau, the migration of the Mormons, and computerized mathematical simulations of ecological systems. Hampshire has also been a pioneer in letting students work on their own for a month in midwinter. This year one girl simulated blindness for two weeks in a self-designed psychology experiment; Holly Lyman, daughter of Stanford University President Richard Lyman, taught herself to weave.

Such freedom is alloyed with year-end examinations that are graded "distinction," "pass" or "fail." Those who flunk can design their own remedial program and try again, but Hampshire intends to expel students who fail to make academic progress. Says Sociology Professor Robert von der Lippe: "By putting a lot of responsibility on students to learn by themselves, we admittedly raise their anxiety, but that's the idea. If you can learn to be your own teacher, then when college ends the process of education can continue." To forestall ossification among the young faculty (average age: 32), professors have no tenure--only three- to five-year contracts.

Duty and Reverence. Hampshire is run by President Franklin Patterson, 54, a softspoken, firm-willed former director of Tufts University's Center for Citizenship and Public Affairs. Appointed four years before the first students arrived, Patterson had ample time to cull 50 faculty members from nearly 1,000 applicants and decide how to spend a $6,000,000 start-up gift from Harold F. Johnson, a publicity-shy New York lawyer and Amherst alumnus.

Patterson expects Hampshire's "hospitality to contemporary life" to be tempered by two "ageless virtues: duty and reverence." The college catalogue warns that academic life must be "hierarchical." Students are not allowed to abolish Hampshire's year-end exams, have no power over faculty appointments, do not sit on the board of trustees. A major continuing problem is money. Hampshire is still scrambling for $22.5 million to teach and house the new classes that will enter each year until enrollment reaches 1,500. With the cost of a year at Hampshire due to hit $4,300 next fall, students have already accused Patterson of running a rich man's college.

Elite or not. Hampshire seems to be turning its students on. "Last night I got high just writing a proposal for independent study in biology," says Jeff Maguire, a student from Old Greenwich, Conn. With eight applicants for every place, Hampshire has already become one of the hardest colleges in the U.S. to get into.

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