STANFORD UNIVERSITY administrators have offered this week to share their study-abroad program with Harvard. If accepted, their proposal will finally provide Harvard students with the formal machinery for receiving academic credit for coursework pursued in other countries, giving undergraduates a long-overdue opportunity.

Up to now, Harvard has been alone among large universities in its not-so-subtle discouragement of study abroad. Students wishing to enroll in foreign universities have been left on their own, spending months searching out programs and coordinating letters from faculty and administrators at both Harvard and their chosen university. As a result, only a few students each year have been able to wade through the protracted paperwork and actually study abroad. The majority simply give up when they discover most departments' aversion to granting credit for work at other, supposedly lesser institutions.

The university can hardly doubt the inadequacy of the present system--or lack of a system. Students are certainly aware of the problem: an overwhelming 91% of undergraduates polled favor a formal study abroad program. Nor can the university question the future popularity of the Stanford proposal, especially as leaves-of-absence become increasingly common at Harvard. Some 30 to 40 per cent of the Stanford student-body has taken advantage of this opportunity.

The Harvard administration should therefore seriously consider the advantages of Stanford University's offer. The failings of the Harvard system are obvious; the wishes of the student body are clear; and the educational value of foreign study is indisputable.