Education: Ghost Town U.

The winds off the plains of western Nebraska drive swirls of grit and tumbleweed past the brick laboratories of Hiram Scott College, and the 1,500 students have all departed. The only people on guard at Hiram Scott nowadays are three patrolmen who take turns touring the 280-acre campus. And near by lives Hiram Scott's last president, Dr. Walter Weese, 53, a slim, sandy-haired scholar from Yale, who survives on savings and uses up the rice left behind in the college's empty kitchen.

"I'm getting pretty good with the dishwasher," says Dr. Weese, an expert...