LEE A. DUBRIDGE 



round numbers: endowment, 30 per cent; gifts, 30 per cent; 

 government contracts, 30 per cent; tuition, 1 o per cent. Whether 

 this is just the "right" ratio or not, no one can say. But one can 

 say that maintaining all of these sources of support is of very 

 great importance to any private institution. 



It is, of course, just here that all private institutions have 

 a common problem — that of obtaining income from a variety of 

 sources to support both educational and research programs. 



There is no question but that the relative importance of 

 endowment income in the private universities has been declin- 

 ing in the nation as a whole. This has sometimes been mis- 

 takenly referred to as the "erosion" of endowment funds. 

 Actually, endowment funds have not eroded at all; they have, 

 as a whole, risen rapidly both in book and in market value and 

 they have also increased in their earning power, when properly 

 invested, nearly as fast as prices have risen. Every private insti- 

 tution which has been on its toes has also secured substantial 

 fractional increases in its endowment funds in recent years, 

 and these increases are continuing. 



Yet, research and teaching costs have outrun endowment 

 income, not only because the prices of specific products have 

 been inflated, not solely because salaries and wages have risen 

 sharply, but because the equipment, materials, techniques, and 

 manpower for doing research and teaching have changed so 

 greatly. Intricate and enormous machines and instruments, 

 requiring large crews to build and operate them, were almost 

 unknown before the war, even in industrial laboratories. Now 

 they are commonplace. 



Clearly, this radical change in research activities has not 

 been financed by endowment funds. The change has been pos- 

 sible only because government funds have been available in 

 substantial amounts. Granted that some government funds 

 have been misplaced and misused; granted that some have been 



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