"Here Are the Books"

Had it not been for the speech by President Detlev Wulf Bronk, Johns Hopkins University's 75th anniversary last week would have been like any other mildly retrospective academic ceremony. There were the usual distinguished visitors, wearing the hoods of great universities from Paris to Peking. There were prayers, speeches, honorary degrees, and a band that played the grand march from Aida. Then up rose President Bronk to make some announcements about the future.

First of all, said he, the university was about to launch the biggest fund-raising campaign in its history--$75 to $100 million over the next 25 years. More important, it was embarking on a radical new plan for higher education. "We propose," said Bronk, "to make this a university in which the sharp distinctions between undergraduates and graduates will be eliminated ... in which students will be given the opportunity to progress as rapidly as they are able." It was a plan that would overhaul traditional requirements from top to bottom, slash away department lines.

It was also a plan that might change the U.S. concept of university study.

Even Harvard. If it does, the Hopkins will be living up to its old role as a solid innovator in U.S. education. Founded with money left by the Baltimore railroad tycoon, Johns Hopkins, it aimed from the first to concentrate on graduate studies and research. .In so doing, it marked out, for the first time in the U.S., the characteristic pattern of the modern university.

Under Daniel Coit Oilman, Hopkins' first president (1876-1901), the university grew mightily. Lord Kelvin, Lord Bryce and William James were among its distinguished lecturers, Woodrow Wilson and Philosopher Josiah Royce among those who worked for its Ph.D. The medical school, with its famous four--Sir William Osier, William H. Welch, William S. Halsted and Howard A. Kelly--was for years the best in the U.S. Other campuses followed the Hopkins in emphasizing advanced research. Even Harvard's imperious Charles W. Eliot had to concede that "the graduate school of Harvard University . . . did not thrive until the example of Johns Hopkins" forced it to.

In later years Johns Hopkins continued to grow (present enrollment: 2,680), but it lost its commanding lead. Since 1949, when he became its sixth president, dynamic Detlev Bronk has been re-examining the scheme of Hopkins education.

"This Is the Problem." Under the Bronk Plan, Johns Hopkins will go after the ablest students it can find. (Part of the $75-$100 million Bronk wants will go for broadened scholarship aid to attract them.) Unlike the University of Chicago, which also lets students go as fast as they can, Hopkins will not require any standard set of courses unless a student wishes them. A first-year man may start right out taking graduate physics and senior German if he is qualified. He will not have to aim for a degree, can plan his curriculum (with the help of a faculty adviser) as he chooses. Neither will he be required to have bachelor's and master's degree before he works for a Ph.D.: he may aim at the doctorate from the first day he is in the university, pass up the intermediate degrees.

He will be eligible to attend lectures of his own choosing ("for stimulation," said Bronk, "but not dictation"), will take examinations when he feels ready. Said Bronk: "A great deal of undergraduate education is built on ... telling a student what to do--at the very time he is developing intellectual habits for life. Too rarely is a student told, 'This is the problem with which we are going to deal. Here are the books.' "

At 53, Detlev Bronk combines the background of a topflight scientist with the efficiency of a topflight executive. The son of a Manhattan Baptist minister, he graduated from Swarthmore ('20), took his Ph.D. in physiology at the University of Michigan. By the time Johns Hopkins picked him in 1948, he had become one of the nation's top biophysicists, was bossing both the Johnson Foundation for Medical Physics and the Institute of Neurology at the University of Pennsylvania. For four years (1946-50) he also held (as a part-time job) one of U.S. science's most important posts: chairman of the National Research Council. One of Bronk's educational antipathies: the idea that a university should "assume the functions of a trade school or provide entertainment for the masses."

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