Often in the past, the University has helped a new college in the New England area get its start. It did so for the first time in 1701 in New Haven and the result was Yale. It did so two years ago in Waltham and the result was Brandeis University, now a coed institution of 460 and growing fast.

The fledgling college has patterned a General Education program after the University's, has similar composition and language requirements, got its first set of football pants from the H.A.A., and has even taken Harvard faculty men onto its staff.

Brandeis is also profiting by Harvard's experience with physical development. The new university will never look as if it had been laid out by Louis Brandeis' cow. Careful plans for a ten-year expansion program have been completed and the university, already owner of 160 acres of land, intends to buy more.

"We're not going to make the mistake of land constriction," Abram L. Sachar, president of Brandeis says. "We want an organic campus for our university which will include nine graduate schools and 2000 students by 1960." These are ambitious plans for a two-year-old institution, which started with a few run-down buildings and the purpose of making a corporate contribution to American higher learning on the part of the country's Jewish community.

While denominational universities are nothing new in this country, one backed by Jewish interests is. Although there have been other attempts to found such an institution, Brandeis is the first to succeed.

Two groups, headed by George Alpert of Boston and Rabbi Israel Goldstein of New York, jointed in 1945 to seek funds for a college; they acquired the present location in 1947. Previously, the property had belonged to the Middlesex College of Medicine and Surgery. When the institution failed, its owners gave the property to the Alpert-Goldstein group on the condition that whatever university be established, it must operate without discrimination as to race, creed or color.

After the Board of Trustees voted Alpert their president, they decided to name the school after Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis.

High expenditures were immediately necessary to put the University into operation. Remodeling the castle alone took the major part of $1,000,000.

Money and Controversy

Finances were indirectly responsible for the embryo college's first major controversy. In 1946, the two founding groups had asked Albert Einstein to let his name be used in the fund raising drive. The Einstein Foundation for Higher Learning became the first main money-seeking branch. When Goldstein became involved in a dispute with the scientist, the Rabbi resigned. This was in 1946.

When in the next year the trustees set out to elect a president of the University, Einstein supported Harold Laski, professor at the London School of Economics. But the board desired an American educator and Einstein, displeased, dropped his name from the list of the school's supporters. In 1948 the Board elected Sachar as president of Brandeis. Then retired, Sachar had been an important educator--a recipient of Cambridge University's first Ph.D. degree--and for 14 years the head of Hillel Foundations.

When 107 first-year students arrived in the fall of 1948, they found that, so far as educational policy went, Brandeis was little different from other U. S. colleges. Sachar explains that the University intends to follow traditional lines, at least for the present.

G.E. and English A

Someone familiar with Harvard's present program would notice Brandeis' General Education system in particular. The catalogue reads: "All matriculated students must complete the prescribed work in the General Education curriculum, comprising the two year sequences in the Social Sciences, the Humanities and the Sciences." And a College man would also notice: "All matriculated students must be able to express their ideas effectively in English . . . (This) Committee will administer an English proficiency examination . . . Students not exempt will be required to take English Composition A . . ."

All students must also complete required work in physical education, And, unless a Brandeis student meets his language requirement in the first two years, he automatically goes on probation. He (or she) must choose a field of concentration.