Leaves of Absence

Yale University announced earlier this month that it has received $300,000 from the Carnegie Corporation for a new five-year Bachelor of arts degree program. The grant will enable twelve undergraduates in each class to spend their third year "working and living" in underdeveloped areas of Asia, Africa or Latin America.

Although the year abroad will be integrated with specialized study when the student returns, the purpose of the program is not primarily academic. It is designed, as President Kingman Brewster said on April 7, "to develop an intimate awareness of the extent to which values, expectations, standards of living and ways of life can be totally different from what the American student has inherited and experienced." Its major goal is "development of character and motivation"-a sense of perspective. And it guarantees official deferment-draft exempt status-to the student who interrupts the staid and established sequence of academics with a year in the "real world."

Yale's program, in contrast to existing foreign study programs, calls for a virtual furlough from academic discipline. In contrast to Harvard's leave of absence, it integrates that furlough with courses and tutorial when the student returns. It "consciously breaks the sequence of testable learning," says President Brewster, "not under the shadow of opprobrium or for a fancy 'grand tour' but as part of a programmed educational pattern which splices experience with learning." The essential feature of Yale's program is neither its $300,000 nor its provision for a year in underdeveloped areas. It is rather than the student's sojourn from academics is coordinated with a "programmed educational pattern."

The present draft law stipulates that a student may be certified for deferment only if he is actively enrolled in classes and in residence at a degree-granting institution. But Yale has shown that the year away from academics can be made officially a part of the collegiate experience, so that the student who is neither enrolled in classes nor in residence may still be pursuing a "college education" within the meaning of the law.

The Administration at Harvard has recognized that a "college education" need not be limited officially to four years in the classroom-that a year away from academics may furnish an opportunity for intellectual and emotional growth, "development of character and motivation." Under the present law, however, it has been unable to grant draft exempt status to students taking a leave of absence. Senior tutors may "clarify" the student's status in a letter or phone calls to the local draft board. But as the conscription of several students revealed last year, clarification does not constitute deferment.

Students should be offered the opportunity to coordinate the leave of absence with a program of departmental study. To justify deferment the year of non-academic activity might serve an independent study project or senior thesis. A government major concentrating in Latin American politics might "live and work" in Argentina, Brazil or Peru. An anthropology major specializing in archeology might spend a year digging in Greece. Flexibility and individual initiative would be the key features of the five year degree. Financial support and travel would be desirable but not necessary. The entire program would be made an optional addition, not a prerequisite, to the present leave of absence. And its success would depend on close consultation with advisors and tutors.

We believe that the five year degree represents a positive and creative approach to the year's leave of absence and we hope that the college will institute it, at least on an experimental scale.