BASIC RESEARCH AND THE PRIVATE UNIVERSITY 



understanding why they should be asked to underwrite those 

 costs. So, of course, the universities don't ask them to. They 

 ask for "unrestricted funds," or funds for "general support." 

 But of course this is just a euphemistic way of requesting the 

 same thing — money to pay the costs of research which others 

 are pretending to support. 



I must sav that corporations as a whole have been exceed- 

 ingly generous in responding to this appeal for unrestricted 

 funds, and this has saved many an institution, including my 

 own, from going broke in recent years. Or rather, I should say, 

 unrestricted corporate support has enabled us to abandon our 

 prohibition against accepting funds from government agencies 

 which do not pay full costs. We now can accept such funds in 

 limited amounts and still remain solvent. 



The principal problems in connection with the govern- 

 ment support of research are: 



i. To increase the funds available for basic research. 



2. To persuade all government agencies to pay full costs 

 of the research they support, in spite of contrary advice from 

 their scientific advisory committees (including in full costs the 

 Drorated share of the salaries of the faculty members who do 

 the research). 



3. To enlarge the degree to which block or departmental 

 or general grants are made available for strengthening an area 

 of science rather than only a particular project. 



4. To persuade the Bureau of the Budget and other fiscal 

 and auditing agencies to modify radicallv the cost-accounting 

 practices which they now insist upon and which are inappro- 

 priate to educational institutions. (With some difficulty I 

 restrain mvself. from a further discourse on this latter subject, 

 which is even now a subject of strenuous and difficult negotia- 

 tions between the universities and the government.) 



115 



