Cheers

for Old Curmudgeon!

A noted commentator conjures up

the college of his choice

HIs 1s the preface to the cat-

alogue of Curmudgeon Col-

lege, an experimental — in

fact, still imaginary — institution of
higher learning.

Our Philcsophy: No student
should feel compelled to attend a
college he doesn't like. So if you
disapprove of something here, don't
bother to demonstrate. Just leave.

Our Policy: Absolute freedom,
tempered with occasional expul-
SIOMS.

Dormitory Rules: We don’t have
any. As a matter of fact, we have
no dormitories. Our founder and
president, Henry J. Curmudgeon, .
can't see why an educational insti-
tution should be distracted by run-
ning a hotel business on the side.
So our students live anywhere they

like — motels, boardinghouses, .

brothels or communes. How they
behave there is a matter that con-
cerns only them, their, landlords,
their parents and the local police.

Sports: For the same reason, we
have no sports program. Why mess
around with show biz when Joe
Namath can do it better? Any un-
dergraduate who feels in need of
exercise can apply to the mainte-
nance department for a broom, or
can go to Jocko Sullivan's Gymna-
sium, located near our downtown
campus. Obsessive exhibitionists
are free to hire their own basketball
court or football field.

Sit-Ins: All students are welcome
to sit in any classroom as long as
they like for the standard lecture
fee of $1 an hour, payable at the
door. But any attempt to sit in the
administration building will be
treated as criminal trespass by the
local law (Knucks McGrory, six-
foot-three, 280 pounds). Under-
graduates, in fact, have no occasion
even to go near the administration
building, except on the first day of
each term, when enrollment fees

" are payable at the drive-in window.

Governance: The college is gov-
erned by President Curmudgeon,
period. He hires and fires the facul-
ty, fixes salaries, sets the curricu-
lum, makes final decisions on the
admission and expulsion of stu-
dents. He may from time to time
consult the faculty on administra-
tive matters, but feels no obligation
to take their views seriously. Early
in his career, President Curmud-
geon learned that the typical .pro-
fessor can’t administer his way out
of a paper bag. As he observed, in
his now famous paper on collegiate
governance:

“The true scholar is inherently
incapable of running anything. By
temperament, he loathes the very
concept of authority and, even
more, the idea of exercising author-
ity himself. Consequently our
faculty is limited to its proper func-
tions: teaching and research, in
that order.

“Students participate in govern-
ance the same way that customers
participate in the governance of a
department store: If they don’t like
the goods offered, they can go else-
where.” :

Tenure: None. Each faculty
member signs an undated resigna-.
tion the day he is hired, and thence-
forth serves at the pleasure of the
president. In academia’s prevailing
sellers’ market, a talented man can
always take his pick of a dozen
chairs; tenure, therefore, merely
shelters the incompetent.

Nevertheless, to make sure that
it gets the best men available,
Curmudgeon pays salaries twice as
high as the normal scale. In addi-
tion, it offers unique fringe ben-
efits. Professors never have to waste
their time in committee meetings
or the deliberations of an academic
senate. They also are freed from
the demeaning obligation of crank-
ing out “scholarly works” in order
to demonstrate their “productivity.”

THE READER'S DIGEST

September
1970

Condensed from
Harper's MAGAZINE

Joun FiscuHenr

On the contrary, they are discour-
aged from writing anything for sub-
sidized publication — that is, for a
scholarly journal or university
press. When a professor has some-
thing worth putting into type, any
number of commercial publishers
will be delighted to get their hands
on it.

There is also our Professorial
Piece-of-the-Action Plan. Instead
of enrolling for formal courses, stu-
dents simply attend any lectures or
seminars they consider rewarding
— basing their choices on the cat-
aloguc descriptions, the “Student
Appraisal of Faculty” published
each term, and the campus grape-
vine. Such choices are not made
lightly, since undergraduates have
jto drop a dollar into a toll box every QO
time they enter a classroom. Those
teachers who consistently produce
above-average gate receipts get a
percentage of the take.

To avoid rewarding the merely
entertaining lecturers at the ex-
pense of the more profound,
classrooms are monitored with
closed-circuit TV so that the quality
of each professor's performance can
be periodically evaluated by a rec-
ognized authority in his discipline.

Admission Policy: Elitist. No
student is admitted unless he dem-
onstrates his ability to write a page
of coherent, correctly spelled Eng-
lish prose. Moreover, this college is
designed for those who already
know what they went to do with
their lives, and want help in pre-
paring for it. Undergraduates who
prefer to put in four years of intel-
lectual fingerpainting while they
“find themselves” can go elsewhere.

We are not accredited, and we
award no diplomas. Instead, a stu-
dent may, if he wishes, ask for a

Certificate of Coimpetence in his®

chosen field — whenever he thinks
he is ready for it and can persuade '
his teachers to siga it — whether