No. 665

Students at Ohio's coed Antioch College in Yellow Springs join no fraternities or sororities, never wear caps & gowns, care nothing for intercollegiate sports and, in several courses, grade themselves. Working with the faculty, they set the campus rules, vote community "taxes," and each year elect a paid student manager to run the college. Students even vote on the hiring & firing of professors. Last week, when Antioch chose a new president, an undergraduate was on the seven-man committee that did the choosing.

The man the committee picked was 42-year-old Psychologist Douglas Murray McGregor. Leathery, spiky-haired McGregor is an expert on "human relations." He was once night watchman at the mission his grandfather founded in the '90s for Detroit's jobless. After studying at Wayne University, he worked in a gas station, later took a Ph.D. at Harvard. In 1937, when M.I.T. decided that its engineers should be more than just animated slide rules, it hired Psychologist McGregor to see what he could do about it. He has been there ever since.

McGregor, who believes that classrooms and real life are too far apart, should feel at home at Antioch. The college, founded by Horace Mann in 1853, had only 39 students when Engineer Arthur E. Morgan took over in 1921 with a few radical ideas to try out. Since then, students have spent half of their five years at Antioch on off-campus jobs. Morgan's famed "Antioch Plan" has boosted the student body to 1,100, extended the campus to 30 states and 400 offices, stores and factories, from the Washington Post to Macy's basement. Antioch students often join unions, and two years ago the college gave one coed full credit when she spent most of her work term on a picket line.

Appointed head of TVA in 1933, Morgan turned Antioch over to Dean Algo D. Henderson. Last fall Henderson resigned and 70-year-old Trustee Morgan led the hunt for a new president. McGregor was the 665th man whom Antioch investigated for the job, before finding the one it wanted.

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