Exchange Scholars

William Lyon Phelps makes an unusual suggestion in an Interview printed in the Harvard CRIMSON. "I should like to see adopted," he says, "the policy which is now carried on extensively in German universities, the interchanging of undergraduates. Groups of Yale men might spend their Junior year at Harvard and likewise a group of Harvard men spend their Junior year at New Haven. This would be an extremely interesting experiment and would, I think, prove successful in the end."

Such a system should at least be worth trying. It is open to considerable argument whether from a strictly curricular standpoint most undergraduates would gain thereby. On its social aspect, however, the plan has a certain appeal. Each college might act as an antidote for the more unfortunate features of the other. A better balanced product might very possibly result.

Some of the bounding campus figures here at Yale, completely lost in the bustle of one activity after another, might find spiritual solace during a year spent in the quarter, more sophisticated atmosphere of our Cambridge contemporaries. So with a few of the Harvard ultra-sophisticates, with their superficial scorn of any display of enthusiasm, their dilettante idealization of "culture" -- for them a year in the more normal and possibly more sincere New Haven air would do a world of good.

Of course, there are difficulties involved. The question of the transfer of course credits from one institution to the other would probably strangle the plan with endless red tape. But red tape is sometimes cut, even in a university, and in spite of the fact that the present trend is towards a comprehensive, closely integrated course in Junior and Senior years, the difficulties might be chopped away. Yale News.