Two winters have passed since Dean James E. Lough of New York University, first conceived and tried to organize a university of 450 students, with a faculty of 40, housed aboard a steamer which would circle the globe while a year's college work was done. Twice the registration of students lagged so discouragingly that the sailing was postponed (TIME, Sept. 28, 1925). There was also the difficulty of obtaining a suitable faculty.
Last week, at long last, all was in readiness aboard the S. S. Ryndam at her Hoboken pier. Trunks were swinging to the hold. Librarian Stevens (Williams College) was arranging her shelves (a complete college reference room). Henry J. Allen, onetime (1919-23) governor of Kansas, was winding up his arrangements to publish a daily newspaper on board, representative and facsimile of 48 U. S. dailies. At his home in Cleveland, Dr. Charles Thwing, president-emeritus of Western Reserve University and national president of Phi Beta Kappa, assembled his effects and, with Mrs. Thwing, went on from Cleveland to his post of intellectual commander. He could accompany the cruise only as far as Los Angeles, via the Panama Canal, but planned to rejoin it in February in the Mediterranean. Meantime his duties would be performed by one or several of other executives embarking—Deans Albert K. Heckel of the University of Missouri, and George E. Howes of Williams College; Dr. William Haigh of Switzerland; Daniel Chase of New York State University; Mr. Walter C. Harris; onetime-Governor Allen.
Whistles whistled; tugs tugged. The "university afloat" headed out of New York harbor for Havana. Western matriculants to the "university afloat" had been offered the privilege of meeting the ship at Los Angeles next month, at the cost of missing three weeks' work. To stay-at-home students, this "cost" sounded farcical. Who would do any studying, any work, on a joyride to 35 foreign countries with a lot of professors who had signed up for nice soft berths? But stay-at-homes knew not whereat they snorted. Some weeks ago the seagoers were obliged to file their choice of .studies and many a bundle handled by grumbling roustabouts on the Holland-American pier last week, was heavy with textbooks, dictionaries, notepaper, study-lamps. "Hard work" was the ship's first order.
The students were not all young men, as originally planned. Several young wives and not a few studious unmarried women had been accepted. About one-third of the passenger list was composed of this year's college freshmen whose parents had considered that their young would make more of a land university after literally seeing the world. Full credit for courses passed awaited the voyagers when they should return to stationary education. Instead of frivolous weekends in large U. S. cities, they would have spent their spare time in trips ashore, under watchful and instructive supervision, to foreign banks, temples, schools, playgrounds, parliaments. All along their course, ministries of education waited to show them courtesies.