Education: Double Degree at Yale

Some high school seniors now enter college ready for sophomore work; many collegians do graduate work long before they graduate. Last week Yale voted to speed the trend even more. By squeezing five years of work into four, some Yalemen will now be allowed to graduate with bachelors' and masters' degrees at the same time. Hoped-for eventual result: younger, sharper Ph.D.s.

Critics fear that such early specialization may kill off liberal arts colleges, and Yale concedes that humanities students may need more time to mature. It will try the idea first with math, a field especially suited to precocity. Only a...