Two-Year Bachelors

University of Chicago will award a bachelor's degree after two years of college. So announced Chicago's bold young President Robert Maynard Hutchins last week. It was one of the most revolutionary moves in U.S. collegiate history, for the B.A. has stood for a four-year college education ever since the first class graduated from Harvard in 1642.

Chicago's act capped a trend already widespread among U.S. colleges: separation of the first two years of college from the last two. At Chicago it took form as the Chicago Plan, introduced in 1931. Under it, freshmen and sophomores take comprehensive courses in four general branches: biological sciences, physical sciences, social sciences, humanities. As juniors and seniors they specialize in one of these branches.

President Hutchins urged junior colleges to give a bachelor's degree to their graduates, announced that other universities had indicated they would follow Chicago's example. Chicago's program, he observed, will resemble that of British public schools like Rugby, which weeds out mediocre students, sends only 8% of its graduates on to Oxford and Cambridge.

Said Hutchins: "General education can easily be completed by the end of the sophomore year. . . . But the junior and senior years ... are crowded with mediocre students who go on to the bachelor's degree because that is the only recognizable reward that college offers. ..." Under Chicago's new plan "students who have no business continuing beyond sophomore year can leave with self-respect."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.