Want a full scholarship? A degree in New-Age Studies?

You could transfer to the International University of Advanced Studies, an on-line university run by a Harvard Medical School (HMS) alumnus.

If it sounds visionary, that's because it is. The university is chartered by the Principality of New Utopia--a two-year-old city-state on three submerged seamounts in the Caribbean that currently has more than 500 citizens.

The nation's founders say it promises to be "an oasis," "a banking and insurance center" and a "tax haven".

Richard L. Crews HMS'63, a California psychiatrist who also heads Columbia Pacific University (CPU), says his board of regents is now evaluating applications for its first class. There are nine applicants, and school starts in January.

The university--whose board of regents includes Ph.D.s from Cambridge, Rice University and the University of California--offers Bachelor's degrees in New-Age Studies and Master's in Information Technologies, Ocean Studies, Space Studies and Future Studies.

There are 180 full scholarships available--thanks to an endowment of $13 million footed by New Utopia. The money will be raised through the sale of bonds and a 15-percent duty on imports to the city-state. Tuition to the university is $500 per course, plus $25 to apply and $200 to enroll.

"We're way under our quota in terms of available scholarships," Crews said. "We're in the happy position of being constrained only by academic merit."

Crews, 61, has been involved in alternative education for several decades.

At Columbia Pacific University, degree candidates write Master's or Ph.D. theses about their own lives.

"It's a unique market that Dr. Crews dealswith--people who can profit from having alife-experience degree," said Paul J. Davis, whowas Crews' lab partner at HMS and now raises moneyfor their class. "It meets a need...and Dick verycreatively responded to that need."

Davis, chair of the department of medicine atAlbany Medical College, said Crews is an"enormously bright, creative, funny guy."

ButDavis also said he isn't about to move to NewUtopia or enroll in his former classmate'suniversity.

"There's an appeal to this which cannot bedenied," he said. "It doesn't appeal to me, butcertainly there are members of our society who arecaptivated with the idea that something like thiscan exist."

Still, Davis said opening an on-line,futuristic university with a charter from afledgling utopian nation isn't beyond the realm ofwhat he'd expect one of his former classmates todo.

"I am rarely surprised by what my classmatesdo," he said. "It's a wonderful group, enormouslyinnovative and always fun to think about."