Second, the undergraduate program of concentration--spread over four disciplines--could provide nothing more than a survey of each. "A man could just splatter himself all over without getting very deeply into the complexities of any one field," says Professor Gardner Patterson, Director of the School. "Although we offer a wide area of choice," he added, "we demand that the choices be made with care."

In the organization of the School, two forces tend to work in opposite directions: the participating Departments sometimes exert a fragmenting influence, while the School's administrative staff attempts to unify the program. But this problem is not serious; the School does not have a faculty of its own. Rather, it is a cooperative venture of the various social sciences departments. Patterson doubts that a discipline called "Public and International Affairs" really exists, and the School does not try to develop a new discipline, but to offer an inter-disciplinary approach to certain problems.

The School requires its seniors to spend one term either as a Conference leader, or as a member of a senior seminar. These seminars add a further element of unity to the program. This fall, for example, an editor of the Reporter Magazine has discussed from a journalist's point of view, the "Substructures of Government"--such as the Press and Congressional Committees. An-other seminar concerns Problems of Modern Germany.

Concentration in the School concludes with a senior thesis (At Princeton, no sharp distinction is made between honors students and those who shuffle along in a non-honors program: everyone writes a senior thesis. There is also a three-part senior comprehensive examination,--an essay on a very broad question, a second essay on a set of field problems, and a rather specific question which is not, however, "course-oriented."

But is Woodrow Wilson "liberal arts"? some ask. The officials of the School reply that its program not only belongs in a liberal arts college, but is, in fact, one of the most valuable fields of concentration at Princeton. If the School acted merely to coordinate courses for its "members," it might be criticized as disunified. But the Conference and the senior seminar draw together (the various disciplines), and students presumably gain at least preliminary acquaintance with the tools of the social sciences. And, significantly, they "learn by doing," by applying these several disciplines to important public problems.

Hard-Working Students

The School's morale remains unmatched by any other department at Princeton, Carmichael claims. "Here," he explains, "there is more interest in work than among typical Princeton undergraduates." Absorbed by studies that have both immediacy and breadth, the Woodrow Wilson concentrator does not, Carmichael adds, "regard working as a sin."

Of last year's seniors, three-fifths plan to study law and were admitted to Harvard Law School. But the School's program, while it requires some research similar to law school work, deals with broad questions, not with specific cases and precedents; and it utilizes an inter-disciplinary approach, not a body of jurisprudence. Out of a class of 45, 12 plan graduate study in such fields as business, Soviet studies, and journalism.

Although the undergraduate remains the School's central concern, a new program was devised after the War for graduates interested in public administration. Unlike the college program, the graduate division has competitors: the Fletcher School of Diplomacy at Tufts, Harvard's Littauer Center of Public Administration, and Georgetown University in Washington.

The graduate division is small--only 20 men in each of two classes--and its students are usually drawn from other universities. These students are not future scholars and teachers; they are men who plan an active career in public administration.

The graduate division has so far produced only ten classes, but already some of its alumni have attained challenging positions in the Government. One is administrative assistant to the Vice President; another, an assistant to the Assistant Secretary of State for Disarmament; another works for the Labor Committee of the U.S. Senate.

Like the undergraduate school, the graduate division does not "attempt a survey of the various social sciences. Rather, it selects from each of these fields that knowledge and those technical and conceptual tools and methods of analysis which have proved useful in helping to sort out, analyze, and perhaps solve problems of the sort with which men in public affairs are likely to be called upon to deal."

The graduate school also seeks to provide the student with a "kit of tools," and "in matters relevant to his work, it seeks to teach him some of what is known, how to find more of what is known, and to be search in "what is not known" is not known." But advanced scholarly research in "what is not known is not the concern of these graduate students, who are future "men of affairs."

From this general educational aim, the graduate School has developed certain specific goals: (1) a high degree of proficiency in necessary fields of economic analysis; (2) an understanding of the basic institutions in this and other societies, and historical changes in these institutions; (3) an awareness of the fact that public problems involve a complex of elements--social, political, technological, legal, and administrative; (4) an appreciation of the nature of administrative and political processes, their significance in the formulation and execution of policy, and the importance of ethical values in human relations; and (5) a high degree of proficiency in one of the established social science areas.

If a college "is to do its right service," Woodrow Wilson once said, "it is indispensible that the air of affairs should be admitted to all its classrooms.