Learning on Wheels

The classroom door swung open barely two minutes after the start of Adelphi University's graduate course in Principles of Marketing. In walked a gray-uniformed functionary who matter-of-factly began punching the tickets of the equally nonchalant students. The scene was purest Marx brothers, and last week it began playing daily on the Long Island Railroad's Port Jefferson line. The classroom is a converted parlor car, and the students are commuters in one of two new programs to let businessmen take courses as they ride to and from New York City.

Adelphi offers a master's in business administration. Eager scholars have to make the 6:46 a.m. out of Huntington or board at any of eight stops farther out. The "Edu-Tran" program offers Financial Accounting and Process of Management on alternate mornings. Coming home on the 5:56, commuters can choose Macroeconomic Analysis or Principles of Marketing. So far, 78 students have signed up. In New Jersey, 20 morning riders on the Jersey Central from Matawan this week start noncredit courses in Literature for the '70s and Our Changing Economy. The professors are from New York University.

As the universities see it, mobile instruction is another opportunity to serve the noncampus set--and to pick up badly needed extra income. Adelphi's fee of $246 a course is, in most cases, paid by the students' employers. To see what the money is buying, TIME's Roger Wolmuth sat in on Adelphi's Principles of Marketing class last week. His report:

It had been a long day for the back-to-school bunch, most of them in their mid-30s, a few older. They had caught an early-morning train, gone through their regular routines at corporations like Xerox, IBM and Bristol-Myers and now were being asked to absorb economic theory. But no one looked tired. The timetable on the 5:56 was clear enough: 76 minutes to Huntington on this evening, two years to an M.B.A., more prestige in the office and perhaps bigger salaries. The mood was positive.

Rumbles and Shouts. A special challenge to a commuting student is tardiness: two would-be scholars found that the classroom had left before they got to the station. Still, New York commuters are famous for adaptability, and the 23 who did make it were no exceptions. Not the conductor, the blur of passing towns, sexy billboard advertisements or occasional stops seemed to bother anyone. Professor Desmond Reilly, a moonlighting advertising manager from the Olin Corp., stood in the center of the car. He made himself heard clearly over the rumble of the wheels by using a microphone; microphones are about to be installed so that students do not have to shout their questions.

One thing none of them questioned was the wisdom of commuter classrooms. These are ambitious men with full-time jobs and full-sized families who would find it difficult to obtain an M.B.A. by the usual route. "Actually," said Ed Gradel of the Pfizer Corp., "I started on my master's degree ten years ago and never completed it. I mean, now I've got a wife and four kids. This is a much better idea than getting home at 10:30 at night or going to school all day Saturday."

The class was also a welcome contrast to the regular diversions of newspapers, pinochle and the bar car. "I'd normally be standing in the gin mill four cars forward," said John Bunbury of Monsanto. "The socializing and the standing keep you awake so that you don't miss your stop." As the conductor announced Huntington, no one seemed to have minded skipping his drink. The train was on time--something of a rarity in itself--but delays along the line would not necessarily be bad. They would simply allow more time for learning the Principles of Marketing.

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