The Progressive College
E XPERIMENTAL colleges have existed in America at least since the founding of the University of Virginia in i8i9. Throughout the ensuing one hundred and twenty years, certain colleges and universities have carried on the experimental tradition. Usually they have been concerned with liberalizing subject offerings, or promoting free scholarships, or both. Something of this essential flavor can be found in the histories of Harvard, Cornell, Michigan, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, and Chicago. On the other hand, the small undergraduate college which originates as a wholehearted experimental unit is more recent. Reed College, founded in i9ii, is generally thought to be the pioneer here. And the movement beginning with Reed, which set new standards for student initiative and intellectual freedom, has culminated during the last twenty years in the so-called "progressive colleges," Sarah Lawrence, Bennington, Bard, Black MountainRollins, and possibly others. These have made various departures in aim and method, discussion of which seldom fails to raise the temperature at the educational conference table. Although a good deal has been written about each of these colleges individually, little has been done in an attempt to determine what they collectively may mean to contemporary education. It is the purpose of the study here reported to make a beginning along this line by examining the educational programs of three of the progressive colleges in order to ascertain the extent to which they are meeting contemporary needs for a better program of general education. The colleges chosen for study were Sarah Lawrence, Bennington, and Bard, all small privately endowed colleges in the Northeast, offering four-year liberal-arts programs leading to the A.B. degree. The needs were determined through a survey of the available literature on general education in the American college. The college programs themselves were studied chiefly in three ways: examination of the respective bodies of literature dealing with them from the founding until the present, with particular attention to trends and changes in educational policy; firsthand observation of the colleges in action, supplemented by a study of records and interviews with administrative heads; and fifty interviews with faculty members. In the muddle of words and ideas involving the meaning of "general education," there is fairly common