Graduate School 131 



as the result of healthy exercise than of forced labor. The 

 traditional model for the graduate student was an ascetic, 

 self-denying cehbate monk devoting all his energies to the 

 pursuit of knowledge. Now his life is a curious combina- 

 tion of bourgeois security and Bohemian unconvention- 

 ality. The bourgeoisie features include his stable fellowship 

 income and his married state. The Left Bank Bohemian 

 atmosphere stems from his preoccupation with intellectual 

 and artistic matters, the temporary and often makeshift 

 nature of his housing arrangements, and the casual quality 

 of his social life. 



The reasons for this striking change in status and out- 

 look are too complicated to discuss in detail here. Our 

 major concern must be with the financial arrangements 

 that made it possible. There is nothing particularly novel, 

 of course, about the idea of providing scholarship help to 

 poor but promising students. The new thing is the scale 

 on which it is done. Both the number aided and the amount 

 each individual receives have gone up enormously since 

 the war. The change has been most striking in the natural 

 sciences for several reasons. The role that scientifically 

 trained people played in winning the last war and planning 

 for the next is widely recognized both by the pubhc and 

 their representatives in Congress. Generous appropriations 

 have enabled the National Institutes of Health and the Na- 

 tional Science Foundation and certain other government 

 services to estabUsh extensive pre- and post-doctoral train- 

 ing programs. Additional grants directly to universities 

 have improved faciUties and enlarged the staffs available 

 for graduate training. Some of these funds can be used 

 to support the students themselves. The generous research 

 grants enjoyed by all competent science departments are 

 also used to support graduate students who fail to receive 

 pre-doctoral fellowships. More often than not the work 



