The legend on MIT’s campus goes that students once had to leap into the Charles River and swim across its dirty water without stopping to graduate.
That was never true. But the institution does require all students to prove their swimming ability — in the heated indoor pool.
Students can either take swim lessons or complete a 100-yard test.
“I always tell them ‘There’s no style points. I can be here ’til 5,’” said Carrie Sampson Moore, the university’s director of physical education and wellness.
Swim tests used to be common at American colleges, but MIT now finds itself increasingly in the minority. It’s one of the few schools that’s clinging to the test, arguing that swimming is an important life skill. Since the requirement suddenly rose in popularity around World War II, many schools have dropped it due to equity or practical concerns.
The tradition dates back more than a century. Cornell claims credit as the first college to mandate swimming in 1905. MIT began its practice during World War II. Poor recordkeeping makes it hard to know the true origins of why schools implemented this standard, but many schools cite drowning rates among service members as a motivating factor.
“Higher education was a training ground for physically getting our troops ready,” said Sampson Moore.
Over the decades, institutional priorities have shifted.
Amherst College reconsidered its requirement in 1973 after a student drowned during the swim test. Gerald Penny, a Black student from segregated New Orleans, had never learned how to swim.
“They ended the swim test as a mandatory part of graduation,” recalled Amherst graduate Anthony Jack, who once ran the college’s Black Cultural Center on campus, which was named after Penny.
Jack is now a sociologist who teaches at Boston University and studies inequities in higher education. He argues colleges should abandon swim requirements altogether.
“When you talk about inclusion on a college campus, you need to understand where your students are coming from and what experience that they’ve had access to,” he said.
More recently, for various reasons, several schools all scrapped their swim tests, including Notre Dame, Dartmouth, Hamilton, the University of Chicago and Williams College.
“To some extent, it felt outdated and anomalous,” said Williams professor Christopher Nugent, who led the faculty committee that reviewed the requirement.
The committee found that nearly all the students placed into swim class were students of color or international students. Only 3% of those enrolled in the swim class were white domestic students.
“There were some demographic issues there that we found a little troubling, and we would find troubling with any graduation requirement,” Nugent said. He noted that Williams doesn’t require students to learn other life skills like CPR, personal finance or a foreign language to graduate.
U.S. service academies still have swimming mandates, though the Air Force Academy only requires it for select roles. Only a handful of universities still have swim tests, including Cornell, Columbia, Swarthmore — and, of course, MIT.
Administrators say they’re preserving the requirement because swimming is a life skill.
“We have a very intellectually bright population,” Sampson Moore said. “Sometimes either they don’t have the time to do it as they’re growing up because they’re really focused on their studies, or they didn’t have access because they were an international student and it wasn’t as common.
“All of our students, I would bet my paycheck, are going to be leaders of something, right? Whether they’re a leader of their family or they’re leader of a department or a corporation, they can influence those around them,” she continued.
Students who don’t pass the test can take it again. MIT also offers swim classes for students who want to earn a physical education credit or get more practice in the pool to meet the graduation requirement.
Alexis Boykin grew up in Dayton, Ohio, and took swim lessons at a local Y.
“As I got older, I just didn’t really go to pools that often, so I lost that skill,” she said.
She first attempted the test at an MIT orientation event. “If you go, you get a free shirt,” she said, laughing. “So I went, and I made it about halfway and had to stop.”
It wasn’t until her senior year that she enrolled in the swim course.
“The first classes were just breathing, getting underwater, trying to float,” she said. “Then you eventually progressed into different strokes, arm movement, leg movement and getting into the deeper pool.”
Now a graduate working in a lab, Boykin said she’s grateful she learned how to swim again. She hopes MIT keeps the requirement.
