Not only is that Larry Kert, Broadway's original Tony from "West Side Story", doing the featured tap dance, he is dancing to a instrumental big band arrangement of "The Jitterbug", a song that was deleted from MGM's The Wizard of Oz (1939) earlier in same year.
This is the final Our Gang appearance of "Woim", played by Sidney Kibrick. At age 95 (August 2023), he is the longest surviving child actor ever officially credited in an original Our Gang short. Robert Blake, born September 19, 1933, is behind him. Mildred Kornman, formerly the oldest surviving actor, passed away in 2022.
When Alfalfa is first imagining being at college, a sign for "Hayle University" is shown and the gang is singing "Boola Boola" - a song associated with Yale University.
This short's date of release, Saturday, December 2, 1939, was exactly 26 years before Disney's comedy movie That Darn Cat! (1965)'s release on Thursday, December 2, 1965.
Hayle University is preparing for the "big game" against Yarmouth. Yale and Dartmouth had met on the gridiron for the 58th time just a week before this short was released, with Yale winning 20-7. This was Yale's 32nd win against 19 losses to Harvard; 7 of the games had ended in ties. In 1939, the Harvard football team's final record was 4-4, while Yale's was 3-4-1.