Stay-at-Home U.

"Now you can sit in your own home and matriculate!" cooed the announcer. "Hug the radio and become a college student! In cooperation with the University of Louisville, WHAS presents for the first time over any standard commercial station a college course for credit!"

The half-hour program that followed was the first installment in the University of Louisville's twice-weekly "radio-assisted correspondence course" in "Problems of Modern Society." It included a chorus of All Hail to You, Dear U. of L., a talk by Louisville's unshrinking President John W. Taylor, and instructions on how to enroll (to sign up, just tear off and send in a registration blank; for college credit, enclose $30 tuition and you will get study materials, written assignments and, in due course, exams). Negroes, who by state law are forbidden to study in the same classroom with whites, were invited to enroll too.

Louisville had other big radio plans. NBC, getting into the act, is broadcasting a nationwide course in contemporary U.S. literature from Louisville, with college credit available at first only to listeners of a local FM station. By fall, says NBC, a dozen other colleges will offer credit for it.

Most of last week's first program was a rambling, transcribed classroom bull session, complete with sound of chairs scraping and doors slamming. Its subject: Must we have war with Russia? As it drew to its inconclusive end, the announcer slithered again into his commercial: "Be alert! Be informed! Be able to hold your own in an argument!"

At week's end, more than 300 listeners had written in to sign up.

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