As the new academic year begins, a troubling question hovers in the air, stirred by the action of a major university. Can a university take away a degree earned -- and paid for -- for misconduct that has nothing to do with academic performance? PNS commentator N.D. Batra, a columnist for The Statesman (Calcutta, New Delhi,) is a Professor of Communications at Norwich University in Vermont.

Can a university revoke the degree of a student who has successfully completed all the academic requirements because of misconduct on campus when he was a student? Massachusetts Institute of Technology has recently revoked the degree conferred upon Charles Yoo, a 1998 graduate of its business school. Yoo was found to have played an instrumental role in the death of a freshman, Scott Kruger, at a fraternity initiation in 1997.

Yoo, now a foreign-currency options trader in Philadelphia, was a "pledge trainer," a person who was supposed to "break" freshmen into the life style of the fraternity, in this case, Phi Gamma Delta.

He herded the "pledges" into a room to see the movie "Animal House," and served them copious quantities of beer and whiskey. Kruger could not hold his liquor well and fell into a coma. Later, according to the autopsy, he died of alcohol poisoning and choking.

I remember that night as the parent of a student at MIT. It was one of the worst tragedies ever at a university that considers itself one of the best in the world in science and technology. Our son, Nikhil, a senior at MIT, called home and assured us in a dull muffled voice that things were not that bad at the school.

We cringed in fear, nonetheless. In 1994 when he was admitted, he received lots of telephone calls, personal letters and brochures from various fraternities urging him to join them. We were taken aback by these aggressive recruiting tactics, and felt relieved when our son decided to live in a dorm and use his spare energy playing baseball rather than being part of a binge frontier.

After Kruger's death, the university sent letters to all MIT students' parents, informing them of the steps being taken to prevent binge drinking and hazing -- problems seen in many universities.

College graduation day is a happy one for parents -- at commencement, every parent seems to be saying, "My kid is alive and getting out of the school with a degree, and whether it is worth $160,000 I spent I don't know but nobody can take it away."

MIT's action against Mr. Yoo raises a troublesome question. Does a university have the right to revoke a degree for non-academic misconduct? MIT rules permit this if "a case is brought after graduation, for actions that occurred before graduation but were unknown at that time," but it is not clear whether or not this rule would stand judicial scrutiny.

If MIT's action is challenged, the court would first ask whether there are precisely defined categories of misconduct which may trigger revocation of a degree. What if 20 years from now an MIT alumnus is accused of rape by a woman who backs up her charge with DNA evidence -- would the university revoke his degree?

The question which MIT has not answered is whether the university authorities have been doing enough to control the excesses of its fraternities. Did MIT tolerate, if not encourage, rowdy behavior to provide students relief from its excessively demanding curricula?

Finally, if a university can revoke degrees, can an alumnus return his degree, after five or ten years, expressing dissatisfaction with the teaching and ideology of the university and ask for his money back?