Yale Dean Sturges Proposes Plan To Integrate College, Law School

A drastically new plan aimed towards reducing the time and cost needed for a student to receive a college and law school education has been proposed by Wesley H. Sturges, Dean of the Yale Law School.

The new system would required only five years for a student to receive a law degree instead of the traditional seven. Two years of law school time can be saved, Dean Struges said, "if the casebook and problem method used in the Law School were introduced at the end or middle of the sophomore year in college."

Erwin N. Griswold, Dean of Harvard Law School, yesterday declined to comment on Sturges' proposed plan, saying that he would probably discuss the idea with Sturges soon.

In addition to the benefits which his plan would give students, Dean Sturges pointed out that it would also help greatly to reduce costs to the Law School itself. "The law schools of the country are not in close enough accord with each other," he commented. "In the realm of teaching they are all attempting to have complete programs, thus causing an increase in the number of professors needed, and a rise in costs." The dean suggested that this problem could be alleviated if inter-school trading of specialized teachers was permitted. This would keep costs down and provide a richer education.

Sturges will submit his plan later this month in Chicago to a meeting of law school officials from the entire nation.

A so-called "Seven year law plan" was instituted at Harvard shortly after the war. Designed to integrate college and law school, it was not an acceleration program, and attracted only a few pioneering students.