Education: Fels’s Naptha

Connoisseurs of humbug, suggests President William C. Fels of Bennington College, should not overlook the splendid prose of college catalogues. In 1951 Fels edited The College Handbook, a digest of hard-sell spiels by member institutions of the College Entrance Examination Board. When Fels recently reread it (in search of a description of his own indescribable girls’ school), he shuddered “for my sins,” penitently wrote a spoofing exegesis in the Columbia University quarterly Forum.

Fels finds that nearly every college, to the best of its ability, claims to be both urban and rural. In rural Frederick, Md., Hood College explains: “To the advantages of the country campus and small town setting are added those of the metropolitan areas of Washington and Baltimore.” In Providence, Brown University performs this feat: “From the historic Market House, one may look straight up College Hill to an elm-shaded campus . . . The almost perpendicular hill has made it possible for Brown to retain the atmosphere of a country college.”

Where the urban-rural ploy will not do, topography must suffice. From Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell University touts its hilltop isolation. “In a remarkable number of instances,” says Cornell, “the founders of American universities have chosen a hilltop as the appropriate site for an institution of higher learning. Ezra Cornell chose … an especially impressive hill.” (As Fels puts it: “The higher the hill, the higher the learning.”) Fels also finds colleges “obsessed by the need to reveal their exact relationship to nearby water. Beloit is ‘on the east bank of the Rock River.’ Carleton is ‘on the east side of the Cannon River, which flows north.’ ”

Well-Rounded Man. Fels has joyfully compiled a whole new college lexicon based on their own words: “A women’s college is one that has none of the disadvantages of co-education but has several select men’s colleges within a few short miles. Wells’s 298 girls have ‘many joint activities with Colgate, Cornell, Hamilton, Hobart, Rochester and Syracuse . . .’ All colleges are small colleges . . . The advantage of a small college is that it combines unity with diversity. For example, Washington and Lee (900 undergraduates and 160 law students in 1951) ‘is small enough to maintain a sense of unity, yet large enough to provide diversity.’ On the other hand, Wellesley (1,650 students) ‘is large enough to provide diversity and small enough to provide a sense of unity.’ ”

As for that luxuriant term, “the well-rounded man,” Fels observes: “This is a phrase used by men’s colleges. Women do not like to picture themselves as spheres . . . Progressive colleges, which are special, do not turn out well-rounded men. They ‘develop the individual.’ ”

High Quality Education. Another overworked term—”high quality education” —defies Fels’s definition. “I have had to go beyond The College Handbook to find a definition of this most important and yet puzzling phrase . . . Now, at last, the phrase has been defined by the presidents of Amherst, Smith, Mount Holyoke and the University of Massachusetts . . . ‘By high quality education.’ say the four presidents, ‘is meant a type of education which is equivalent to that which each of our institutions offer.’ ”

Fels’s hard-won conclusion: “Bennington College is a small, rural, private, experimental, women’s college of high quality which emphasizes the development of the individual. It shares the cultural advantages of New York, Boston and Montreal. Its hill is moderately high. From it, on a clear day, you can just see, beyond the toilet paper factory, the historic Walloomsac River flowing northward away from Williamstown, where there is a small, rural, private, experimental college* of high quality for well-rounded men.”

* Williams College, which shares the cultural advantages of Bennington, Smith and Mount Holyoke.