THE COMPREHENSIVE FEE
The comprehensive fee for attending the University is $1500 for each three months. This fee is payable initially within one month after acceptance as a Member, regardless of the actual time of entering. It is payable immediately if granted admission less than a month before entering. Subsequent to entrance in studio, the three-months' comprehensive fee of $1500 is due one month in advance of the beginning of the next period. Checks or money orders are to be made payable to "The University of the New World" (or simply "UNW") and mailed to the Rector, University of the New World, 2 Washington Square Village llB, New York, N.Y. 10012. Persons for whom payment in Europe is more convenient may pay by check, money order, or cash to "The University of the New World" at 8 Avenue de France, Sion 1950, Switzerland.
The comprehensive fee covers lodgings, food, certain travel, medical and hospital insurance, travel insurance, and all fees of the University. Various books, tapes, raw film, and incidentals would not be covered in the fee. The travel insurance covers $200 worth of belongings and $5000 against accident in any type of vehicle, but not liability to others. The medical and hospital insurance covers visits to a doctor when ill, accidents, and hospitalization for illness or accidents. The University provides a list of qualified persons, and engages a medical officer for preliminary physical and psychological consultation and referral.
ALL FULL-TIME STUDENTS
The Studio system, though generally most flexible, does not lend itself to part-time study in residence. Therefore, all students on campus are full-time. The calendar (see below) is so flexible, in turn, that the actual way to become a "part-time" student is to spend an intensive period at the University and then depart for a period of time.
WITHDRAWALS
The comprehensive fee is not refundable. If a student, once in residence, thinks that he cannot stay for the duration of three months, he can give three weeks notice and take a leave of absence of not less than two months. If he then returns, the unused portion of his fee is applied as a credit against his next three month's comprehensive fee. If he does not return within a year, the unused balance is forfeited to the University. If a student Member is invited to leave the University, one-half of the unused portion of his fee is refunded him. Ordinarily a Member who does not do well in studies or personal relations realizes the fact and withdraws.
There are two modes of withdrawal with prejudice. A student Member may be voted out of a studio by its Members on motion of the studio proctor. He is free to continue in other studios. Or the Chancellor may recommend that a student Member withdraw from the University as a whole and this recommendation, if approved by one of his Studios and subsequently approved by the University Assembly, is deemed valid. The involved Member, in such cases, has the right to define the due process of law that should be followed in the process of judging his own case.
The University is a community that would admit Members regardless of their wealth. The ideal is not possible. Only a fraction of the world's students can afford the costs of their higher education. Many others can go along with the nationalized and bureaucratized systems that are formed from state treasuries. It is not by any means a solution to reaffirm the intention of the University to help free students throughout the world from their unfree "free" educational systems, as well as their expensive private ones.
What the University of the New World can do directly is still considerable. It can provide some work to offset the educational costs of its students. It can actively seek employment opportunities for students in residence and between residences at the University. It can give loans. Finally, it can help find compatible employment once a student's program of studies is completed. With all of this, a student cannot enter the University unless he has found means of paying for his first three months' fee.
During that initial period, for those who seek employment, the University Proctor for Local Placement can work within the University and in Valais to obtain part-time jobs. He can also place certain students in jobs between periods of residence, for periods of from one to nine months. Swiss pay-scales are not as high as the American, but costs of living are not so high and jobs often include room and board. Also, Swiss work-permits for foreigners are not unlimited; at any given time, it is difficult to foresee how many of these will be made available to students of the University. In any event, a student can expect more imaginative and daring efforts to solve employment problems than at conventional schools. Among the frequently mentioned possibilities are hotel and restaurant jobs, construction work of all levels of skill, and arts and crafts.
The loan program is best understood as a long-term deferred payment system without interest and carrying risk both to the University and its Members. Beginning in the fourth month of residence, a student may borrow up to one-third the cost of his education from the University. He agrees to pay back his loan at 1% per annum of his gross income per each $500 borrowed for a period of ten years from the date of the loan. The University can lend to about one out of five students on this basis.
OTHER LOANS AND SCHOLARSHIPS
On principle, the University does not grant scholarships, for they can be regarded as an outmoded form of charity. And the process of awarding scholarships is a rehearsal of many things wrong with University admissions procedures: prejudices, athleticism, fierce competition, haphazard quotas, humiliating investigations, professorial favoritism, large consumption of energies in futile debates unbalancing some departments by fashionable gifts, indulging the whims of dotards and legislators, "gotta beat the Russians in math", second-class citizenship, "We'll take it away if you...", etc., etc.
However, with all of this, the University welcomes a student who brings his scholarship with him and will even administer it if desired or required. It will furthermore help him qualify and apply if he knows of a source. The same holds true of loans from a student's state government, corporation, union, lodge church, bank, or relative. In some cases, a student may discover that he can persuade his college or lending agency to sponsor his "year abroad", using his scholarship or loan for the purpose. The University can also administer, through its bank, the Societé des Banques Swisse, a trust fund that a person would set up for members of his or her family to be used for educational purposes at the University of the New World. In short, the University can make many flexible arrangements.
BUILDING ONE'S FUTURE AT THE UNIVERSITY
The University gives any Member who stays with it any considerable length of time what is usually called a liberal education in the arts and sciences. The value of a college degree is displayed in the student's character and happiness and his influence on his environment, or it practically does not exist. Altogether too many persons are getting college degrees in most countries to guarantee a monetary profit from the experience. A monopolistic trades union job, a bureaucratic Job in government and industry are more lucrative.
Certainly the University of the New World will produce a "profit" if such exists at all. What it can give more than ordinary universities is a capacity for self-knowledge and self-realization, an ability to do things in the real world that carry their own reward (as well as any attached emoluments).
It is likely, too, that the University will be developing its own cadres that can find their life's work in new forms of education outside of the ordinary world of business, government, and academia, and in new forms of activity whose social value will pay far more than their equivalent in dollars. When one thinks, "What will I do afterwards" and knows what lies in store for most graduates of ordinary colleges, he may understand that his future as a person can be most happily tied in with the University of the future.
Again, the University does not encourage the scorning of careers, but it is aimed at making careers purposeful and fruitful. It aims to show its Members how to make an enriching life experience out of a humdrum job, how to "make a silk purse out of a sow's ear", to borrow the Biblical expression.
APPLICATION FOR ADMISSION
TO; Rector, University of the New World
2 Washington Square Village 11 B, New York, New York 10012
1. Please admit me to the University of the New World at Valais, Switzerland. I agree with its general philosophy and its conditions as I understand them.
2. I wish to join you in the month of _____________ , 19__.
(July 1971 is the first month available )
3. I wish to remain for a period of_____months.
(3 months minimum and any number of multiples by 3)
4. I wish to become a member of the Studios numbered ________________________. (Insert numbers from the list, at least one and no more than four )
5. Using A for Advanced, M for Moderately progressed, and B for Beginner I consider myself ___ in Studio #____ ; ___ in Studio #____; ____ in Studio # ____; ____ in Studio # ____.
6. I see myself just now as seeking (check one or more): no accreditation ___; summer semester accreditation ___; a BA degree .__; a transcript of credits___; an MA" degree ___; a "PhD degree ___; other ___.
7. I may need employment by the end of three months.
(Check if 'yes " ___.)
8 I attach a letter about myself and special needs and plans (optional, Check if "yes" ___.)
9. I enclose $10.00 (or other money equivalent) to pay for processing my application (Make cheques payable to 'UNW")
10. I will send $1500 to cover the first Period's bill for my tuition, required books, lodgings, meals and travel to and from U. S. or in Europe (by your arrangements) within 30 days of your acceptance of my application.
11. I have the following requests to make of you. (Use an attached page for any special requests or inquiries, if any. )
My name: signed ____________________________________
My name: (block letters)
______________________________________________
Address me at this location for the next sixty days:
Street and Number ____________________________________
Town, State. Nation & Zip code___________________________