Universities: For Adults Only

By the standards of professional academicians, much of today's adult-education program is neither an education nor adult. Hence the unique reputation of Columbia University's School of General Studies, where a student body of 4,000 housewives, executives and workers, as well as under graduates who have switched from other colleges, has instilled scholarly vigor into the pallid pastiche that often passes for adulted.

With an array of 1,200 courses taught by a first-rate faculty (full-and part-time) of 570, G.S. has grown to become a third undergraduate branch of Columbia, along with the men's college and Barnard for girls. As evidence of its solid status, the school last month moved into its own home for the first time in its 60-year history, with completion of a $1,000,000 renovation on the old School of Mines building, now called Lewisohn Hall.

Tighter Standards. Since the majority of students have jobs, two-thirds of G.S. classes start after 5 p.m. Classes are small, averaging about 20, generating an intellectual intimacy that is rare in a big university. "The older people bring such a depth of understanding," marvels one 24-year-old. "It's an antidote to ivory-towerism"—and a stimulus to further education.

Most of the students intend to get degrees; of those who do, more than half go on to graduate school, often in the face of severe obstacles. A house wife from Leonia, N.J., spent 800 hours commuting by bus to Morningside Heights in upper Manhattan for four years to get a degree enabling her to continue graduate studies at Columbia's Russian Institute. Even the jet set touches down at G.S. Ex-Actress Jo Ann Bliss, wife of the president of the Metropolitan Opera Association, expects a degree in art history next year. Top student in the class of 1961 was Mrs. Hugh Auchincloss, sister of Washington's Bundy brothers, who won awards in history, philosophy, and social science; Mrs. Auchincloss dropped out of Radcliffe when she married in 1942, started at G.S. in 1954. Time was when almost anyone could enroll in G.S. Dean Clifford L. Lord tightened admission standards by requiring candidates without college degrees to take a specially designed scholastic-aptitude test. The result was fewer students but brighter ones.

Off Course? Although the average age of G.S. students is about 28, one-third of them enter in their 21st year, often as direct transfers from other colleges. This has given G.S. a younger look and some of the same collegiate trappings (clubs, a snack bar, a newspaper) of Columbia's other two undergraduate schools. University President Grayson Kirk, attempting to correct what he calls a "substantial veering" from the original role of G.S., has revived proposals to boost the minimum age from 20 to 21.

Whatever the outcome, G.S. ought to remain as Lord-said in his farewell Dean's Day address, "Columbia's answer to the shifting needs of the collegiate generation." And their elders. Now both generations are housed under one roof in a fruitful familial relationship, with the younger students setting the academic pace and the older ones contributing their store of experience.