In listings of the top universities in the US, Harvard and Yale are certain to be included, usually in the top two, so that the rivalry between the two is rather "serious." Besides the "life-and-death" struggles of the annual rowing and football matches, it is already habitual for Yalies to ridicule Harvardites.

Walking across the Yale campus, you suddenly see an athletic shirt with the Harvard name emblazoned on it; strange, but when you get a closer look, the words "I have never been to" are written in tiny print just over "Harvard." According to a school publication, over the last two years Yale has gotten a slightly larger number of the students who were accepted at both Harvard and Yale, giving Yale a temporary moral victory.

There is also scholarly competition. The two universities' law, medical, and business schools are often mentioned in the same breath. In the evaluations of US News and World Report for two years ago and last year, Yale finished above Harvard both times, making Yalies extremely happy. However, according to this year's assessment, it is once again Harvard's turn to gloat.

Immortal as the Pyramids: This rivalry can't help but make one think of Oxford and Cambridge across the Atlantic. It just so happens that, like the history of Oxford and Cambridge, Yale--one of the oldest schools in the US--is also an offspring of the mother of US universities, Harvard.

In 1701, just as the wars of religion were ripping through continental Europe, because Harvard permitted leaders of the Protestant religion to serve as professors or attend school there, Puritan leaders were outraged, gathered together their confederates, and found the wealthy English businessman Yale to donate money, and built a university "as immortal as the Egyptian pyramids" near New Haven in Connecticut; thus was Yale founded.

Because it split off from Harvard, when it was first founded there were implications of resistance to Harvard. In that era when "the university should serve the church," Yale adhered to an orthodox religious perspective, and emphasized the classics in its curriculum. The school history records that early students were required to take subjects dictated by European tradition. The school only discontinued making students study ancient Greek in 1908.

A Sense of Nobility: A bit of the spirit with which Yale maintained tradition can be seen in the "Report on the Course of Instruction" issued under the famous Yale president Jeremiah Day in 1828.

The middle of the 19th century was a high tide for utilitarianism. Many young scholars in the US advocated emphasizing applied sciences in the university curriculum rather than classics. The faculty report issued under Day thus stated that the purpose of the university "is not to teach that which is peculiar to any one of our professions, but to lay the foundation which is common to them all . . . .

The advantages furnished by residence in college can do little more than stimulate and aid the personal efforts" of the individual student. The report remained influential through the Civil War, and moderated the speed of the introduction of a utilitarian curriculum into US universities.

Even today, Yale is still one of the universities in the US with the strongest ambience of tradition and privilege. Huang Yu-chin, a Yale graduate, is reminded every time he goes to a Western restaurant of the seafood chowder served at least once a week in the Yale cafeteria. Few schools in New England retain this continental European tradition.

Each year at the graduation ceremony students must wear traditional gowns carried down from the Oxford and Cambridge tradition. They are led in single file into the hall by professors wearing long chains around their necks and holding ceremonial staves. Within the campus there are many areas for which it is necessary to wear dress clothes to enter, and there are even cafeterias which only permit professors to enter.

Kuo Hsu-sung, currently teaching at Yang Ming Medical College, who has a PhD from the Yale school of Public Health, once tried to enter a certain club with a professor. Because she was wearing a leather jacket, she was only permitted to sit down to dinner after having a dress jacket, which the restaurant keeps on hand, draped around her.

In addition, in the campus with its many traditional structures, there are many secret societies. Aside from those students who have the special characteristics required, others are not permitted to enter. There are clubs in the school which only men can enter, which have recently drawn protests from Yale women. Yale only allowed women to matriculate in 1969, being almost the last Ivy League school to do that.

Cradle of Orators: In line with its emphasis on orthodoxy, Yale's academic system is borrowed almost unreservedly directly from the Oxford and Cambridge tradition.

Altogether, Yale has twelve schools, divided into colleges where students work and study. There are also twelve graduate institutes of Arts and Sciences, Theology, Law, Medicine, Fine Arts, Music, Architecture, Nursing, Drama, Management, Forestry, and the Environment.

Like Oxford and Cambridge, Yale also has a proctor-student system, providing assistance and supervision for all aspects of a student's academics and life. The Yale tradition of "blowing smoke"--smoking while discussing academics--is still treasured by Yalies. In particular, during mealtimes, no matter which college's cafeteria you are in, you can see students of different backgrounds and departments discussing all kinds of issues like Kant's critique of philosophy. ROC Foreign Minister Frederick Chien, who comes out of Yale Law School and who is famous for his oratorical skill, says that in his time at Yale he gained the most from debates with his fellow students in the cafeteria.

Pressure to Keep Up: Coming out of the European tradition, Yale places equal emphasis on a general curriculum and specialized education. The first year or two in the college, students take languages, humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and other common courses. For the last two years they begin specialized fields of study.

Yeh Ting-ying, who graduated from Yale, points out that the undergraduate students are extremely hardworking and know which direction they want to go in much earlier than Taiwan students of similar ages. He observes that most Yale students devote themselves to reading a broad selection of materials and strenuously engage in general discussions, fearing that they will lag behind their classmates.

On the wall at the main gate of Yale Law School, there are two sculptures. One has a student sitting under a lamp with a thick pile of books at his side, buried in intense concentration; the other has the same student standing next to a lectern arguing spiritedly with a teacher.

"The former is when a student has just entered, the latter is when he is just about to graduate," says Chen Wan-ru who is currently studying in the graduate school of Public Health. These two statues truly represent the Yale ideal.

Small Is Beautiful: There are ten thousand students at Yale, half undergraduates and half graduate students, who do not hesitate to say of the school that "small is beautiful." The handbook introducing the school stresses that the 1,300 new undergraduates entering every year are selected from 12,000 applications. The teacher-student ratio is very low; in the Law School for example there are 570 students and 60 professors, a lower ration than even renowned Harvard Law School.

"Yale was established to educate the finest minds," says Yale Medical School professor Cheng Yung-chi. In early times Yalies all served as leaders in the church or state legislature, and today Yale men and women have important roles in all fields. "The credit for this should go to the fact that the school provides many opportunities and lessons to choose from, allowing each person to employ their potential to the fullest," says Cheng Yung-chi.

For instance, in terms of facilities, Yale has a collection of over seven million volumes of books, more than all 30 of Taiwan's university and college libraries combined. They also have a first class body of instructors--this is especially true in the Humanities and History. They are not only number one in the United States, but they could compete anywhere in the world.

"Yale makes you feel like it's an academic heaven," points out Chuan Pei-jung, a PhD in Philosophy from Yale who is currently teaching in the Department of Philosophy at National Taiwan University. In his four years at Yale he gained the most from listening to great professors coming from all different perspectives in class.

He still remembers that there was one gifted History professor who could read 500 pages an hour and moreover covered both China and the West as well as Antiquity and Modernity in his research. It was "exhausting" for students who tried to keep up with him.

He also acquired a great deal from the classroom environment and atmosphere. To sit in graceful classic structures resembling churches in their expanse, listening to this level of scholarship coming from the mouths of these great professors produced a "eternal passion" for scholarship. "This kind of rigor means that when students go out of the university gates, in the face of a rapidly changing profit-oriented society, they still have a certain desire for and insistence on ideals," argues Chuan.

Not Picky About Grades: Yale emphasizes instruction for the finest minds, and so at all times also stresses "modeling oneself after the best." This means that those at Yale, who fit this category, are often struck by the feeling of "seeing the virtuous and trying to emulate them."

Yale Law School PhD Yeh Jiunn-rong points out that at Yale questions like whose grades are bad, who has to retake a class, and so on are rarely talked about. But who is the most advanced is often emphasized. Teachers make a comprehensive assessment from their ordinary contacts with students.

If the evaluation of classroom performance is this abstract, then the hurdle of being accepted is even more so.

Hwang Sheng-yuan, a Masters' candidate in the School of Architecture, points out that Yale wants students who can make the school more exciting. "If you are a strong enough candidate, even the basic requirements to enter such as TOEFL, and GRE are merely embellishments and for reference," says Hwang, who graduated from the Tunghai University Department of Architecture. For example he was accepted by relying on a collection of articles, Architecture and Thought.

There have never been that many overseas students from Taiwan at Yale. At present there are about 80, almost all of whom are in graduate school with most being in the physical sciences or public health.

"In the past when Yu Ying-shih, a member of the Academia Sinica, taught at Yale [he is now at Princeton], there were more students from Taiwanwho came to study humanities, but now there are a lot fewer," notes Chuan Pei-jung. Whether or not there is a powerful professor is crucial in deciding whether or not overseas students can get into Yale.

On the other hand because recently Cheng Yung-chi, the Director of the North American Chinese Association, is there, and Theresa Yang-feng has come from Taiwan to teach at Yale Medical School, the number of students who have come to study at the Yale Medical School Department of Public Health has greatly increased. Professor Yang says that "every year at least one or two students come from Veterans' General Hospital or Yang MingMedical College."

Campus qua Classroom: Because it accents tradition, although Yale is a comprehensive university, the main stress is still on traditional fields. Take for example the history department. It is especially strong in research on the Renaissance period; the Department of English Literature is especially strong in literary criticism, and is usually number one in rankings of American university departments. The schools of theology, law and medicine are extremely famous. A special feature is that all of them have theoretical research as their strong suit. For example, in the medical school, besides the general clinical training required at all medical schools, they also place extraordinary emphasis on research and every student must periodically present a report on his or her own special area of research.

Besides these, the specialized schools for Fine Arts, Architecture, Music and Drama are also extremely dynamic.

These schools were mostly established at the end of the 19th century. Their long histories have allowed them to accumulate intangible assets. For the students who must go in and out of these places every day, just hanging around in this environment is the richest reward.

Hwang Sheng-yuan, a student in architecture, points out that since Yale was founded in the 17th century there are important structures from various periods of architectural history and the school itself is a giant classroom. "If you just look out your window, representative works of the Gothic, Baroque and modern periods are right in front of your face, and a lot of them are works you have seen many times before in your classroom text" says Huang. How could you not be excited studying in this atmosphere?

There is also a rich collection of hardware directly related to these specialized fields. Yale University has three fine arts museums. The "University Museum of Fine Arts," founded in 1823, is one of the oldest museums ever established on an American university campus, and there are extremely valuable holdings stored within, such as original sheet music in Mozart's own hand.

"To be able to touch it and see it with your own eyes . . . the sense of distance is very important. When you have the things Mozart wrote in his own hand, what was once a very distant feeling becomes very immediate" says Hwang, explaining that the holdings and exhibits in these museums are of great help to the students.

It's Worth the Risk!: There is a great deal of homework, pressures are high, and there is little free time. But what most overseas students fear most is that the crime situation in New Haven, where the school is located, is getting worse and worse.

"Although Yale is a school for the nobility, you almost never see a new car," says Yen Yue-feng, who has already received a PhD. Almost all the students' cars have been stolen or broken into, and he himself was once knocked unconscious after getting out of the car and locking the door. He describes the "feeling that 30 years of life could stop in an instant."

In order to sensitize them to security, new students are informed about all kinds of preventive measures as soon as they arrive at Yale: you should have three locks on your door; if you go out at night, you must ask the campus police to escort you home; the school publishes a security handbook every month which tells you which areas not to go into unless you absolutely have to . . . .

Naturally this kind of life is in many ways inconvenient for the students. But despite this, if you asked any student if they are afraid or if because of this they regret coming to Yale, the response is invariable: "It's a little dangerous but it's really worth it."

To Persevere? Or Adapt?: If security is not good, then you just have to be a little more careful. But all of them more or less have regrets about the school's paternalistic style and unwillingness to change its attitude with the times.

This feeling is strongest in the physical science fields. "Every time you apply for funding to buy laboratory equipment the school always says that the purpose of education is not to teach the students practical application but to teach them how to think, and turns down the request," says Ma Tso-ping. As a result, despite the fact that the experimental school is dominant in the physical science departments, the physical sciences at Yale are still primarily theoretical.

Ma Tso-ping, a professor, points out that the era of things like Einstein's coming up with the Theory of Relativity is past. Research in the physical sciences requires facilities and requires investing capital. For example, one laboratory may have several hundred people, and only by cooperating in this way can they achieve outstanding results.

In hiring new professors, because of Yale's rigorous review system, many new professors are unwilling to wait and accept offers from schools proposing high salaries and better conditions. Also, because old professors are occupying most positions, many new professors leave because of obstacles to promotion. Yale's ideal of "hiring the best minds under the sun" is facing a severe test.

Kuo Hsu-song says that she once attended a faculty meeting and heard an argument between new and old professors about whether or not medical students should start clinical training earlier. When the new professors proposed change, the old professors retorted, "what evidence have you got to prove that the results will be even better?" or said, "We've done it this for hundreds of years and there's nothing wrong!"

This seems to be the Gordian knot of why Yalies are unwilling to change: unless you can prove that the change will be even better, then why not maintain tradition?

The question is, given an educational environment of intense competition, can Yale men and women, firmly rooted in tradition, pass the tests of our times? Maybe there is no answer to that today, but the answer is waiting on the morrow.

[Picture Caption]

Yale's Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts library has many valuable and rare items. Not only is the collection renowned, the building itself is also rather special. The marble facade, which looks solid, is actually translucent.

We have to move; come early if you want to get some bargains! You can sometimes see this scene outside school dorms.

Crime is bad in some areas of New Haven. You can often see the bike locked up, but the wheel long gone.

At the campus chapel, some Yalies are tying the knot.

In June of this year, the ROC Overseas Students Association held a going away party for those about to depart in the graduate student dorm, the most common place for overseas student s to congregate.

A famous ensemble of statues in front of the main gate of the law school: the thief, the judge, the lawyer, and the cop.

You can't help but stop and look at this kind of glass design on an impressive structure.

A glimpse of secluded courtyard--an idyllic world for the select few.

Cheng Yung Yu, a professor of Chinese descent, is a true Yalie. He notesthat, "Yale is set up to educate the finest minds."

The old Sterling Memorial Library has exotic scripts carved into the wall--Chinese characters among them.

Yale occupies more than on-half of the area of New Haven proper, and itsfamous old buildings are important local landmarks.

Yale's Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts library has many valuable and rare items. Not only is the collection renowned, the building itself is also rather special. The marble facade, which looks solid, is actually translucent.

We have to move; come early if you want to get some bargains! You can sometimes see this scene outside school dorms.

Crime is bad in some areas of New Haven. You can often see the bike locked up, but the wheel long gone.

In June of this year, the ROC Overseas Students Association held a going away party for those about to depart in the graduate student dorm, the most common place for overseas student s to congregate.

You can't help but stop and look at this kind of glass design on an impressive structure.

A famous ensemble of statues in front of the main gate of the law school: the thief, the judge, the lawyer, and the cop.

A glimpse of secluded courtyard--an idyllic world for the select few.

Cheng Yung Yu, a professor of Chinese descent, is a true Yalie. He notesthat, "Yale is set up to educate the finest minds.".

The old Sterling Memorial Library has exotic scripts carved into the wall--Chinese characters among them.

Yale occupies more than on-half of the area of New Haven proper, and itsfamous old buildings are important local landmarks.