THE SUPPORT OF BASIC RESEARCH 



classes teaches his graduate students and junior colleagues. 



o Jo 



The students profit and so do the teachers; many a research 

 idea was born in the lively discussion of teacher and student. 



Liberal Arts Colleges 



In the liberal arts college, however, the situation is some- 

 times sadly different. The special problems of the liberal arts 

 colleges was the subject of Laurence Gould's paper. The evi- 

 dence he presented of the extent to which some liberal arts col- 

 leges fail to provide time and recognition for research on the 

 part of their faculty members gave serious warning for the 

 future. 



Education is downgraded if the teachers are not able to 

 engage in sufficient research to keep themselves intellectually 

 alive and up to date. A liberal arts college frequently cannot, 

 and normally should not, aspire to become a graduate univer- 

 sity, and its research activities must be on a different scale from 

 those of the large universities. Yet if lack of time, lack of money, 

 and lack of facilities are allowed to inhibit research interests, 

 teaching mav become sterile and both the students and the na- 



o J 



tion become the losers. The students may fail to get the educa- 

 tion they might have had, and the nation to get the well- 

 educated talent it might have had. 



The problem has sweeping consequences, for it is in the 

 liberal arts college, or in the undergraduate college of a more 

 complex institution, that most students receive the essential ele- 

 ments of their college education. Some graduates of colleges 

 that do not encourage research will nevertheless become scien- 

 tists. But to do so, they must rise above the shortcomings of 

 their undergraduate years; how many potential scientists are 

 trapped and unable to rise above their undergraduate handicaps 

 nobody knows. The much larger number of graduates who be- 

 come businessmen, teachers, lawyers, and members of other 



263 



