Education: Blue Jeans with a Difference

He was just an economist—a confessed “illiterate in the arts.” But for the past five years Lewis Webster Jones had presided effectively over Vermont’s arty, progressive Bennington College, whose 300-odd girls favor sloppy blue jeans and custom-tailored curricula, and excel in the modern dance.

Last week wry, engaging Lewis Jones, 47, was ready to take a job as unlike his old one as it could be. The new job: president of the University of Arkansas. Said he: “I’m devoted to Bennington. My wife and I were charter members of the faculty [1932]. But you can’t go on having the same experience. You go flat, you go dead. Small colleges are important for experimenting, but I’d like to get into the main stream—public education—now.”

At Arkansas, Jones will be running a state university where the girls are outnumbered, and wear blue jeans for hay rides, but not to classes. Among its 4,700 students (a 75-year high) are 3,000 ex-G.I.s. Says Jones, grinning: “I like girls, but it will be nice to have a few men around the place.”