Teaching: Dial-a-Course

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When New York's small and conservative Ithaca College* presses some modern communications technology into use in the fall of 1965, any student on the school's new $20 million campus will be able to pick up the phone in his room, dial an archive of magnetic tapes, and hear any classroom lecture in philosophy, history or English that he happens to have missed. The plan, probably the first in the U.S., is aimed at students who cannot show up for class because of illness or scheduling conflicts, and at industrious pupils who want to hear a lecture repeated before taking an exam. What is to prevent an Ithaca student from going through college in pajamas, without ever having to leave his snug dormitory room? Dean of Arts and Sciences Robert M. Davies is not quite sure, but one hedge is an attendance system that strongly discourages cutting classes without a good excuse.