Education: Quaker Marriage

Three colleges can live better and more cheaply than one. So believe three famed small Quaker colleges—Swarthmore (coeducational), Haverford (men only), Bryn Mawr (women only)—which are celebrating the first year of a unique triple marriage whereby faculty and students collaborated to improve their education.

All three colleges are within eight miles of each other in Philadelphia’s suburbs. Two of the three installed new presidents (both Rhodes Scholars) last autumn: Swarthmore, John William Nason, 36; Haverford, Felix Morley, 47, formerly editor of the Washington Post. With Bryn Mawr’s scholarly President Marion Edwards Park, 65, they cooked Up a scheme to exchange teachers, books, students, etc.

Bryn Mawr girls went to classes and lectures with Haverford boys, and vice versa. Sample class: a seminar on the background of the next peace, with two Haverford boys and six Bryn Mawr girls, meeting sometimes at Haverford, sometimes at Bryn Mawr. The three colleges jointly hired a Peruvian to teach South American history.

Students took to the scheme, staged plays together, had joint glee club concerts, planned a joint orchestra. Last week Haverford and Swarthmore sealed the marriage with a remarkable reconciliation.

For the first time since 1925, when Swarthmore’s eleven trounced Haverford 70-to-13 and Haverford cried “professionalism,” the two colleges met at football. Score: Swarthmore 12, Haverford 7.

Elated by the plan’s progress. President Nason observed that still greater economy and cooperation might be achieved if the three colleges had a single president, but that ideal was “not likely to be soon realized.”