DRANG NACH OSTEN

Responding to increased demand for the inclusion of foreign study in the undergraduate curriculum, several eastern universities adopted a few years ago the so-called New Jersey plan, which allows a group of selected students to spend the Junior year at some accepted European university and return as fully accredited Seniors the following year. Although admittedly experimental at the outset, the success of this plan has been so marked that it has been adopted as a permanent feature at such leading universities as Cornell, Smith, and Wellesley, to name only a few. The advantages of this system are so patent and its success so satisfactorily established that its adoption by Harvard would form a logical step in the progressive trend of the undergraduate plan of study.

Such an innovation would, of course, require certain changes in the mechanics of the various fields of concentration. Junior divisional examinations would have to be dropped or included in those given in the Senior year; but this can hardly be considered an objection of major importance, for it is agreed at the outset that the students who are granted this opportunity must be outstanding scholars and the administration has already shown its eagerness to waive academic restrictions in deserving cases. It would also be necessary to make arrangements with the European universities to continue the tutorial work along an integrated line, but this would not be difficult because many of these universities already have a regularly organized tutorial system which could easily adapt itself to such conditions. Other academic complications such as the securing of uniformity of organized study and grading of work are problems which have been solved at other American universities and which certainly present no insurmountable barriers when the will to solve them is strong.

The advantages of a year of study and travel in Europe stand out in undimmed brilliance beside these minor academic and somewhat jingoistic objections. A student concentrating in the language or history of one of the European countries can gain at best a second-hand and unsatisfactory command of the field by study in America. A year of study in the country of his choice would give the student a knowledge of the people and their customs, and a profound and intimate command of the field. With such training the language requirements could be met sincerely, not by the current method of a hasty interview with a cramming school. The cultural aspects of foreign travel and residence need no elucidation here, but rather a more general participation by American college students.

The plan finds no lack of precedent already established in the University. The graduate school has recognized the advantages of foreign study and though it still insists on making an imperious distinction on the merit of foreign courses it seems to be moving in the direction of full recognition of the equality of European study with that at Harvard. Rapid adoption of the plan for undergraduate study seems to wait only upon the overcoming of customary Cambridge inertia.