"Harvard is hoping to launch an initiative composed of Harvard and perhaps some other schools that will allow us direct access to information about sweatshop conditions," he said.

According to a letter to members of the American Council on Education (ACE) yesterday by council president Stanley O. Ikenberry, colleges and universities only recently became able to join the FLA.

Ikenberry wrote in the letter that many member institutions of the ACE had expressed concerns about the problem of sweatshop labor in factories producing college insignia apparel. He suggested they might find their solution by affiliating with the FLA.

"The FLA has adopted a code of conduct and, through its professional staff, will administer a carefully prescribed monitoring process to assess compliance of companies with these standards," he wrote.

Hennefeld said he believed that the AIP had decided to include colleges and universities in order to improve its national image.

"The AIP has gotten a lot of bad press recently and rightfully so," he said. "I think it's trying to re-legitimize itself by involving universities, and possibly trying to take the wind out of the sails of student movements."

But Robert K. Durkee, vice president for public affairs at Princeton University and a member of an AIP task force that pushed for the inclusion of colleges and universities, said much of the motivation for including academic institutions came from the schools themselves.