Commuting to class with the Quaker Consortium

For most Penn students, spending 15 minutes to get to and from class is pushing it.

But last semester, Swarthmore junior Sven David Udekwu measured his commute in hours, not minutes.

Waking up at about 9 a.m., catching a 9:10 bus to Penn and arriving almost half an hour before his 10 a.m. Swedish language class every Monday and Wednesday, Udekwu made a journey into town normally reserved for Saturday nights.

He's just one of the hundreds of students who each semester take part in the Quaker Consortium, a reciprocal agreement between Penn, Haverford, Bryn Mawr and Swarthmore colleges that allows students from one institution to take classes at any of the others.

And even though the arrangement remains relatively informal - although, one could argue that Penn, with only five students participating each semester, gets a lot less out of it than its sister schools - it's one with which administrators seem mostly happy and one that is unlikely to change in the near future.

Unbalanced agreement

Relatively little is known about the origins of the Consortium. Associate Dean of the College Kent Peterman said the arrangement was approved by the trustees in the 1930s, adding that in his 20 years at Penn, few, if any, changes have been made to its structure.

Guidelines for the agreement differ from institution to institution but for most schools, students need only the agreement of various professors and deans prior to registering for a class at another college.

From then on, the student registers for the class and proceeds like any other enrolled student.

At Penn, for example, interested students approach Assistant Dean for Advising Wally Pansing, who directs them to get approval from the relevant Penn department. A letter from the dean is then written, which the student gives to the registrar at the other school.

Some restrictions apply; the course shouldn't be one that's already being offered at Penn, for example. Still, Pansing called the process a relatively easy one. "This is not a barbed-wire situation," he said. Student requests aren't "vetted too closely."

Other institutions, however, have a limit on the number of classes students can take through the program.

Swarthmore, for example, prevents its students from taking more than one class at Penn per semester.

Swarthmore Registrar Martin Warner wrote that the limitation was in place out of "fairness to the consortium."

After all, he added, about 20 Swarthmore students head to Penn each semester, with much fewer making the opposite trip.

"We know that this is not by any means a balanced exchange," he wrote.

A "very Quaker" deal

Despite the imbalance, however, Penn administrators seem content with the arrangement.

"One of the ways the system works now is that it's zero cost," Peterman said.

The deal, he said, is a "very Quaker sort of arrangement," with no money exchanged between the schools.

Certainly, it seems, students at the three liberal-arts colleges may get more value out of the Consortium - Peterman said about 150 students come to Penn in the fall and 125 in the spring, while only five students from Penn take advantage of the program each semester.

But that's not the way to think about it, according to Peterman.

"One of the ways a university can operate is other than [as] a corporation," he said. "They can do good things just because they're good things to do educationally."

Pansing echoed these sentiments, calling the corsortium an "opportunity for students who are looking for the opportunity."

Peterman also noted that, with course enrollments hitting about 25,000 each semester, an additional 150 is a small drop in the bucket.

Strong Main Line ties

Despite Penn's relatively minimal involvement in the program, collaboration thrives at the three liberal-arts colleges.

The Bi-College system, employed between Bryn Mawr and Haverford, involves coordination between academic focus and the hiring of faculty. For example, Swarthmore Provost Constance Hungerford noted that Bryn Mawr specializes in art history and lets Haverford stick to studio art.

Furthermore, students at Bryn Mawr - an all-women's college - often play for Haverford's women's sports teams.

Another arrangement, existing between Bryn Mawr, Haverford and Swarthmore and known as the "Tri-College," involves further sharing of resources, including the integration of libraries.

"We have much closer collaboration than we do with Penn," Hungerford said, noting that she meets regularly with provosts at the other two institutions, but not with Penn Provost Ron Daniels.

The Tri-Co system has also produced academic programs like the Middle East Studies Initiative.

The program pools faculty between the three colleges. Professors travel between the schools to teach introductory-level Arabic, thereby relieving students from making the long bus rides five days a week.

Still, students who want to take upper-level classes in the new initiative - which Hungerford calls a "pilot" for possible future plans - are often forced to enroll at other schools.

As a result, Bryn Mawr sophomore Petra Giblin, who is also taking Arabic classes through the Middle East Studies Initiative, will be taking all four of her classes next semester at Swarthmore.

But although she'll be spending all her academic time at a school at which she isn't enrolled, the thought doesn't strike her as odd.

"I don't see it as that strange, because I think everyone here is kind of used to that," she said. "I guess if you go to [another school] it would make a huge difference, but I never really thought about it that way."

Despite that sentiment, Giblin is adamant about not taking classes at Penn.

She called the transportation issue - SEPTA trains only run once an hour - "a major pain in the butt," noting travel to Swarthmore is strenuous enough.

More than just Pa.

Consortia at other schools, though, have the transit issue more worked out.

Within the Five Colleges system, which encompasses Amherst, Smith, Mount Holyoke and Hampshire colleges and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, an extensive busing schedule runs among the five schools.

The Five College consortium seems more organized in other ways, too. For one, it is technically a corporation, run by a governing body. With a few exceptions, the schools' schedules - including registration, the add/drop period and breaks - are synchronized, for example.

Five Colleges, Inc. Executive Director Lorna Peterson notes the "intimacy" of the five colleges, describing extensive collaboration.

The four colleges, for example, formed Hampshire College as a way to provide a different sort of liberal-arts education for students.

The school has no formalized academic programs and students are encouraged to develop their own courses of study.

There are Five College advising offices on each campus, Peterson said, and a number of joint faculty appointments.

The schools also do not exchange money, and they face the similar issue of imbalanced registration.

Only 36 percent of Amherst students take a class at another institution in the consortium, for example, while 95 percent of Hampshire seniors have - although they are expected to as a part of their studies.

"Once in a while, someone asks about" the imbalances, Peterson said. Still, "it doesn't cost more because courses are being taught anyway."

"I think that we are probably deeper" than the Quaker Consortium, Peterson said, noting that the infrastructure enables "the opportunity for greater planning."

Here to stay

But at least in the immediate future, it appears the Quaker Consortium will remain a relatively loose arrangement.

For example, "building a transport system would [add] costs," Peterman said. As far as building a more formal structure, he asks, "What are the costs going to be, and will they be worth it?"

Right now, "it's more like a service we're providing to the other schools," he said. "It's kind of a gentleman's agreement."

But the agreement helps facilitate intellectual collaboration between the schools, and, Peterman said, "we're a richer place for that."

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