Intellectual Life of Alumni

Abstract

The idea a college might organize itself for continuing education of its students after they leave its halls is relatively new. Experience has been miscellaneous. The conception, if indeed it may be said there is yet any clear conception which any number of people agree, is hydra-headed in its beginnings. It is fair to say, for instance, a part of urge which went into development of Home Study Department of Columbia University was this recognition of intellectual need of alumnus, because department had been built up by a former alumni secretary who had discovered one of principal things alumni clubs wanted . . . was to do. And this something seemed to this official to be educational. Amherst College was first institution, soon after war, to inaugurate a program of educational for its alumni, proceeding on theory a substantial group of alumni have an intellectual interest, and it is our task to find interest, and having done so, to contribute to its development in best way possible. From its original announcement to its fifty-three hundred alumni, one thousand replies were received covering the widest conceivable range of interest. The faculty undertook to guide those interested in their reading, organizing different subjects according to demand, nature of subject, and discretion of faculty committee in charge. This reading-course plan continued at Amherst aggressively for three years, and was then slowly abandoned in favor of a less pretentious and less exacting method. Meantime, however, idea had spread to other institutions and has been developed since a wide scale by American Library Association. In 1925, Provost Penniman, of University of Pennsylvania, announced an educational service . . . based upon two principles: first, education is a lifelong process, and [second], University as an institution devoted to promotion of education should participate in such service. Eight different agencies were proposed for rendering this to alumni, both a professional and a cultural level. And in undertaking these services it was believed that University is entering upon one of most noteworthy advances in history of American education. By 1928, American Alumni Council was ready to recognize intellectual aspect of college-alumnus relationship as its basic and most important one. Since time Council has, in co-operation with American Association for Adult Education, been studying and experimenting in this field of educational activity. The conscious, planned intellectual services rendered in recent years by some of our colleges and universities to their alumni take many forms. Prominent, and perhaps foremost, of methods used is of stimulating and advising systematic reading. This, reader's adviser service, has, in turn, taken varied forms. The original plan at Amherst was designed to organize a certain amount of material around a specified subject in which alumni showed interest, characterized as reading courses. Reviews of best currently issued books have been distributed in certain alumni bodies, with no regard to a previous demand. Book reviews appear in alumni journals with increasing frequency. Smith College has developed Amherst idea, but will permit one alumna to have only one course at a time, thus forcing greater concentration. Wellesley has undertaken to work out for its alumnae intensive courses for those who can come back to college library and spend sufficient time to go thoroughly into any particular subject. The response in any of these cases has not been particularly wide, nor sustained in any certain manner. Perhaps most substantial experience in this field has been of Smith College, where a fairly large and a reasonably well-stabilized group of alumnae have followed work from course to course and from year to year. …