LEE A. DUBRIDGE 



have part of his salary paid by the supporter of his research." 

 (Why not? Somebody has to give the university money to pay 

 him.) Again, "Block grants are bad for they put too much 

 power in the hands of the department heads." So a committee 

 in Washington decided it is more competent to allocate the 

 funds than the university itself. 



As a long-time faculty member myself, I can pray fer- 

 vently that both I and my faculty may be delivered from dicta- 

 torship by government faculty committees. Give me a good 

 smart administrator to deal with and I can dispense with faculty 

 advisory committees, except when they deal with purely scien- 

 tific affairs and not with administrative or fiscal matters. Scien- 

 tists, when they get into government, are their own worst 

 enemies. When they have control over activities of their col- 

 leagues, through the administration of research grants, they 

 become autocrats of the most difficult kind. 



These are serious matters. The rapid rise in research activ- 

 ities has required the universities to expand their plants, their 

 business offices, their maintenance facilities and their libraries. 

 Research grants or contracts which have not borne their share 

 of these costs have been parasites on other sources of funds. It 

 is quite all right to talk about the desirability of the university 

 "sharing the cost" of research with the sponsoring agency. But 

 what with? Endowment funds, as we have said, have scarcely 

 kept pace with rising costs of carrying on the same operations, 

 to say nothing of adding new ones. Corporate executives, I 

 find, get an understandable glassy look in their eyes when they 

 are asked to give money to a university to cover indirect costs 

 of research being sponsored by government agencies because 

 these agencies cannot afford, or are not allowed, or simply re- 

 fuse, to pay the full costs of the research which they take credit 

 for supporting. Corporations and individuals alike have trouble 



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