Education: Phantom College

The last word in candor, a college that admitted it had no expectation of holding classes has been launched in New York.

The college, just founded, got its name and its money from the late Paul Smith, Adirondack mountain guide who made a fortune running a hotel. It has a president (Peddie School’s Teacher Earl C. MacArthur), a campus (the hotel grounds in Paul Smiths, N.Y.), an administration building, a charter—and it expects to have a student body and award degrees. But it will have no teachers, books or courses. It plans to send its students elsewhere to get an education.

When Paul Smith’s son Phelps died nearly five years ago, he left the Smith fortune to found Paul Smith’s College (TIME, April 5, 1937). The trustees surmounted lawsuits by 22 Smith cousins, refused to quit even when they learned that the Smith fortune, once reckoned at $2,500,000, actually would yield only $37,000 a year. Determined to have a college come hell or high water, they announced last fortnight that Paul Smith’s will open next fall, enroll students in its locality, help them choose other colleges to study at, give them scholarships to pay their expenses there. They will be required to come back to Paul Smith’s for a few lectures each summer, when they graduate will get degrees from Paul Smith’s as well as their second alma mater.