Colleges: Community Service

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Many a U.S. university has attempted to end ancient town-gown antagonisms by providing intellectual and cultural services to the community in which it exists. A striking example is the tuition-free Ithaca Neighborhood College founded three months ago by six Cornell University students.

It has a 33-course curriculum, ranging from remedial-reading programs to college-level courses in calculus and chemistry. There is also an extensive program of vocational training in subjects including machine design and "beverage management" (how to run a bar), which one housewife is taking because "you can't get a decent cocktail in Ithaca."

The all-volunteer faculty has 25 professors from Cornell (including Historian L. Pearce Williams and Philosopher Edwin A. Burtt) and neighboring Ithaca College, 40 Cornell graduate students, plus high school and elementary teachers. Rent-free classrooms have been provided by a local junior high school, while Cornell offered lab and library privileges. The college's only expenses are for janitors and a secretary, and its $5,000 annual budget is covered by contributions from Ithaca residents, among them Cornell President James A. Perkins and Historian Clinton Rossiter, who plans to teach at the school next year.

The college organizers originally thought that they might attract about 20 students. By the time registration closed, 350 had signed up, ranging in age from 15 to 70, about one-third of them Negro. Neighborhood College teachers are impressed by the zeal and intelligence of their students. Historian Williams, who teaches the same course in Western civilization at the college that he gives at Cornell, finds that "the older housewives can write a literate essay—which is more than I can say for most Cornell freshmen."