Alumni Colleges

In the past, most alumni have returned to their college campus only for football games and reunions. This summer, however, thousands of old grads are going back for special one-and two-week programs known as "alumni colleges." They live in undergraduate dorms and sit up for all-night talk sessions. Courses range from "Life Up There and Down Here," dealing with the possibility of life in outer space (Cornell), to "The Reshaping of the American Dream" (Stanford). The spread of such programs in the past few years represents one of the few growth areas in U.S. higher education. Says Dartmouth Alumni Director Michael Stuart: "People want to think a little more. After they've been here a few days they're really fired up."

For many alumni, a week or so on campus offers the advantage of a relatively inexpensive vacation with a chance to learn something. Curtis Reis, 41, a vice president of Banker's Trust Co. in Manhattan, attended his fourth alumni college at Cornell last month. Says he: "It is a tremendous combination of a vacation and a different kind of intellectual experience, an exposure to good minds and a chance to explore subjects you can't in the normal course of life." Alfred Moellering, 48, a judge in Fort Wayne, Ind., his wife and two children enrolled in the one-week mini-university at Indiana University for each of the past three years; this summer the adults studied political science and the arts while the children were busy with a recreation program of their own. "The whole family is enthusiastic about it," says Moellering. "It doesn't happen very often that you find something that everybody agrees on."

Camping, Canoeing. Across the nation, about 15 alumni colleges have been in session this summer; most recruit alumni, but accept other adults as well. The cost varies widely. Indiana, for example, charges adults a $40 registration fee plus $46 for room and board for a week; the fee for children is only half. At the higher end of the scale, Dartmouth's twelve-day program costs $345 for adults and $220 for children--but the children have a special vacation of their own with camping, sailing and canoeing off campus.

Although the alumni colleges do not hold exams or give grades, most insist on serious academic work. Stanford sends its applicants a five-book reading list (including Richard Barnet's Roots of War and Robert Heilbroner's An Inquiry into the Human Prospect) in the spring. But some programs take a less intellectual approach. For instance, about 85 adults have signed up for a seven-day course in crime and justice at the University of Oregon this month. In one class a private detective is scheduled to demonstrate how to protect a house from burglars. Many of Oregon's students have not attended a traditional college at all. However, Grace Graham, director of the alumni college, says that "the ones who come without a college degree are usually so well read you can't tell the difference."

Some universities hold short versions of alumni colleges. Northwestern, for example, offers one-day programs geared to specific subjects. Lectures include "Cultural Life in the Soviet Union" and "Where Have All Our Heroes Gone?" They have been so popular that Northwestern is thinking of starting a five-day college next year.

So far, the summer programs seem as popular with the colleges as they are with the aging students. The institutions make use of facilities that otherwise would be idle, and they establish an intellectual--and occasionally financial--rapport with alumni. One Brown graduate was so impressed by his alumni college last year that he sat down and wrote the university a $5,000 check.

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