Education: Second Chance for Women

Though women control the nation's men and money, good feminine minds seem to be going to seed in P.T.A. suburbia. Last week peppery President Mary Bunting of Radcliffe College—herself a noted microbiologist and mother of four —announced a unique chance for "intellectually displaced" women. Called the Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study, it is aimed at women who abandoned academic careers to raise families.

The institute will recruit up to 20 women with Ph.D.s and specific projects, call them "Associate Scholars," and pay them $3,000 a year to flex their minds amid Radcliffe's (and Harvard's) libraries and mostly male professors. Another group of "Resident Fellows," e.g., teachers on sabbatical, will get less pay but the same privileges.

Then what happens? Mrs. Bunting hopes that their projects—books, musical-scores, paintings, scientific papers—will get them known to schools, colleges and businesses looking for bright people. She also sees a fringe benefit: the edifying impact on Radcliffe girls of older women who value the mind as much as marriage.