Study by the Seine

Competing successfully with champagne and chorus girls, the University of Paris draws a few Harvard language concentrators for study each year. A junior year abroad can be valuable for two reasons: to learn more about la vie franchise by living it, and--more importantly--to use intellectual facilities unavailable in Cambridge.

Although Harvard selects these few travelling students scrupulously, it still goes to great lengths to exclude any possibility that "study by the Seine" will become a fancy term for a long Paris vacation. As a check on its far-flung students of Romance Languages, the College requires them to study in France under Sweet briar College's package program. Organized by Sweet briar, but including about eighty students from thirty colleges, this non-profit group ships the students to France, guides them through the terrors of the metro, gives them a Parisian education, and then heads them toward home. But in performing it function, Sweet briar imposes upon the students expenses and shackles that make the program resemble a junior year at Sweet briar.

The first of Sweet briar's impositions is to hustle the emigres down to Tours for six weeks of language preparation. This is a time-consuming waste for the student who knows French in the first place, for Harvard allows only well-prepared students to undertake the program. Sweet briar also farms the students out to French families and provides French advisers for the wandering Americans. Yet it seems reasonable that students specially chosen to study in France are mature enough to find their own place to live, and to consult University officials about their study program.

But Sweet briar not only offers advice and family living; it also has a special library and special courses for the Americans--hardly the best places to meet Frenchmen. Since the Sorbonne offers only advanced courses dealing, for example, solely with one author, Sweet briar has set up a few of its own courses equivalent to the "middle group" classification here. But any student who goes should already have the general knowledge such Sweet briar courses would offer, and it is precisely the specialized courses on which he should spend his time.

The needless imposition of Sweet briar restraints is a large academic handicap; the $650 charge added to travel and living expenses inflicts a foolish financial burden as well.

Sweetbriar's $650 is wasted in an unnecessary program, and it performs just one valuable function. It enables Americans without degrees of bachelor of arts to enter, by special permission, certain classes in the French University, which usually requires a college degree from Americans. Yet Harvard students in the past have obtained such special dispensations on their own for a total tuition of $10. Harvard itself, as one of the leading universities in this country, could surely obtain a standing dispensation equal to Sweet briar's.

Harvard should not abandon the junior year program merely because of Sweet briar's ineffectiveness. Instead, it should set up a program of its own--not a vast system of advisers and special libraries, but a small-scale plan enabling highly qualified students to study abroad on their own. Detailed Harvard examinations on return would provide more of a check than Sweet briar's regulations, which treat all juniors as juveniles.