Sweetbriar, and Not Harvard?

For many Harvard students, to study abroad is becoming an increasingly remote prospect. In the past most undergraduates seeking foreign education have simply taken a year off, traveling and studying at their leisure. But, since most draft boards refuse to defer a student not working directly toward degree requirements, the recent lowering of the draft age to 21 has barred many from taking leaves of absence.

Military worries aside, students anticipating graduate or professional training--especially in law or medicine--are often reluctant to postpone by twelve months the completion of their education. And with competition for fellowships increasingly keen, graduate students in academic fields cannot always be certain of obtaining the necessary funds.

Recognizing this squeeze on foreign study, most colleges have drastically expanded their junior-year-abroad programs. In the majority of cases, the student enrolls directly in a foreign university, but remains under the stringent supervision of a reliable American sponsorship program, the most popular of which are run by Wayne State, Sweetbriar, and Indiana universities.

It is ironic that Harvard, the only American college well known and widely respected in Europe, has lagged behind most others in developing opportunities for foreign study. In 1952 the Faculty authorized the Romance and Germanic Languages Departments to grant carefully screened applicants junior-year-abroad under the Wayne State or Sweetbriar programs. In 1961 the authorization was extended to the History and Literature Department. Concentrators in all other fields are left high and dry, unless they can persuade their department chairman to steer the individual request through the Committee on Educational Policy and the Administrative Board--bureaucratic channels of which most undergraduates are unaware.

At least three other departments should ask immediate Faculty authorization to set up foreign study programs. In History, Government, and Social Studies there are numerous students who plan Senior theses on European topics and who possess sufficient grasp of a foreign language to benefit from education abroad. In its own cosmopolitan way, of course, Harvard is strikingly provincial, and we expect there will be a flury of indignant questions: Why should anyone think he can learn more in Europe than at Harvard? Why let people fritter away a year at a lax foreign university? How can a student afford to miss junior tutorial, so necessary to passing general examinations?

The first two questions assume that Harvard's system of frequent exams is superior to the more permissive European pattern. Without arguing pedagogy, it is clear that in both cases most of the learning derives from reading, and from associating with fellow students. We can hardly see a disadvantage in doing the reading in a foreign language and the associating with foreign students. We agree with a spokesman for History and Literature that "the difference between the two systems provides an educational challenge to the student who must resolve them."

The experience of History and Literature also answers the third criticism, that junior tutorial is absolutely indispensable. Of the nine students it has so far sent abroad, none has approached failing his generals, and several have done outstandingly well.

Professor Kalstone of History and Literature has summed up the matter: "When we asked Faculty authorization, all sorts of disasters were predicated. None has come to pass." We are convinced that none would now come to pass were the program extended to other appropriate departments.