The Campus Vacation - Without Tests or Grades (and Cheap, Too!)

In the summer months, nearly a dozen U.S. colleges and universities offer weeklong and longer residential programs for adults of all ages, without entrance requirements or tests, without grades or other nervous-making hurdles; you attend for the love of learning. Mornings, you're in a classroom pursuing profound topics with an eminent faculty member; afternoons, you use the campus grounds and gym for summertime recreation. The price is always less than a typical summer resort vacation. Here are six examples:

Cornell's Adult University Ithaca, New York. The single most ambitious of the warm-weather programs, CAU offers 33 weeklong seminars this year, July 5-August 1. Topics include field ornithology, writing workshops, politics, literature, and science and society. Prices (including tuition, lodging, meals, daily hospitality hours and more, double occupancy) range from $805 to $875 per person. Call 607/255-6260. Colby College Great Books Summer Institute Waterville, Maine. Scheduled for ...