Dear Old SNAFU

Army education authorities reported last week that in Accra, on the African Gold Coast, two G.I.s had refused furloughs so that they would not miss their classes at the "G.I. College of Accra." From Accra to Adak in the Aleutians, in informal Army and Navy "colleges" which supplement the correspondence courses sent out by USAFI (TIME, Feb. 21), servicemen are studying everything from reading to calculus. Some of the 700,000 students to date:

P: A pharmacist's mate, first class, took Spanish, which he expects to be useful with his Mexican customers when he resumes his job as manager of a drugstore in Arizona.

P: A 29-year-old serviceman at Guantanamo Naval Base, wanting to qualify for a higher rating, registered for arithmetic. He was soon convinced that he should learn to read first.

P: A middle-aged Seabee signed up for general high-school courses. His ambition: to get a diploma at the same time his daughter does.

Typical is the campus of the "University of Adak," in the Aleutians. It is sometimes ankle-deep in mud. Its plant consists of four half-barrel-shaped Quonset huts. Its faculty is a pickup team of volunteers. A 47-year-old chief bosun's mate in the Seabees is the faculty's linguist. A onetime student at the Universities of Paris and Moscow and onetime lieutenant in the Czar's World War I army, he speaks French, German, Serbian, Bulgarian, Russian. Another Adak instructor is a music teacher who was once "Amos & Andy's" organist.

Service courses generally run eight weeks, sometimes 16. Classes meet two or three nights a week, for an hour or more. Each "college" offers whatever courses its faculty can teach. There are no compulsory tests, but the voluntary tests are as stiff as an accredited college's. They are marked with military rigor. Students in dear old "SNAF U" (a name invented by Guantanamo Base's students) either "pass" or "fail."

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