A non-traditional and sometimes iconoclastic law school has announced plans to create a new kind of undergraduate college -- one focused on history.
The new college will offer only the junior and senior years of instruction, will operate in a no-frills manner to keep costs down, and will offer the single major of history. The American College of History and Legal Studies will start offering classes in August 2010 and has been licensed to operate in Salem, N.H. -- just seven miles from the Andover, Mass., campus of the Massachusetts School of Law. While the law school and the history college will be independent of one another in a legal sense, with their own boards, many trustees are expected to serve on both boards, and the two institutions will start with overlapping administrations.
Lawrence R. Velvel, the dean of the law school, said in an interview Friday that he saw a need to promote the study of history in a way that was affordable and might reach new groups of students. "I have been aware that this country is not only ahistorical, but because it doesn't know history and ignores history, it makes the same mistakes over and over again," he said.
Tuition is planned to start at $10,000 a year -- low in comparison to most private colleges.
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