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By Root 2070 0

for young executives who had conformed so completely to the role of organization man that they were not capable of the initiative and vision required in top executive ranks. For women, this could be done by a national program, along the lines of the Danish Folk-High-School movement, which would first bring the housewife back into the mainstream of thought with a concentrated six-week summer course, a sort of intellectual “shock therapy.” She would be subsidized so that she could leave home and go to a resident college, which is not otherwise used during the summer. Or she could go to a metropolitan center on an equally intensive basis, five days a week for six or eight weeks during the summer, with a day camp provided for the children.

Assume that this educational shock treatment awakens able women to purposes requiring the equivalent of a four-year college program for further professional training. That college program could be completed in four years or less, without full-time classroom attendance, by a combination of these summer institutes, plus prescribed reading, papers, and projects that could be done during the winter at home. Courses taken on television or at local community colleges and universities on an extension basis, could be combined with tutorial conferences at midyear or every month. The courses would be taken for credit, and the customary degrees would be earned. Some system of “equivalents” would have to be worked out, not to give a woman credit for work that does not meet requirements, but to give her credit for truly serious work, even if it is done at times, places, and in ways that violate conventional academic standards.

A number of universities automatically bar housewives by barring part-time undergraduate or graduate work. Perhaps they have been burned by dilettantes. But part-time college work, graduate or undergraduate, geared to a serious plan, is the only kind of education that can prevent a housewife from becoming a dilettante; it is the only way a woman with husband and children can get, or continue, an education. It could also be the most practical arrangement from the university’s point of view. With their facilities already overtaxed by population pressures, universities and women alike would benefit from a study program that does not require regular classroom attendance. While it makes a great deal of sense for the University of Minnesota to work out its excellent Plan for Women’s Continuing Education10 in terms of the regular university facilities, such a plan will not help the woman who must begin her education all over again to find out what she wants to do. But existing facilities, in any institution, can be used to fill in the gaps once a woman is under way on her life plan.

Colleges and universities also need a new life plan—to become lifetime institutions for their students; offer them guidance, take care of their records, and keep track of their advanced work or refresher courses, no matter where they are taken. How much greater that allegiance and financial support from their alumnae if, instead of the teaparties to raise funds and a sentimental reunion every fifth June, a woman could look to her college for continuing education and guidance. Barnard alumnae can, and do, come back and take, free, any course at any time, if they meet the qualifications for it. All colleges could conduct summer institutes to keep alumnae abreast of developments in their fields during the years of young motherhood. They could accept part-time students and offer extension courses for the housewife who could not attend classes regularly. They could advise her on reading programs, papers, or projects that could be done at home. They could also work out a system whereby projects done by their alumnae in education, mental health, sociology, political science in their own communities could be counted as equivalent credits toward a degree. Instead of collecting dimes, let women volunteers serve supervised professional apprenticeships and collect the credits that are recognized in lieu of pay for medical