THE SUPPORT OF BASIC RESEARCH 



for special purposes. But the Wilhelm Rontgens of the future 

 should not have to apply for research grants to support their 

 pioneering ventures. 



The Sources of Money 



Symposium participants had several things to say about the 

 financial support of basic research. Most fundamental was the 

 insistence that neither the federal government nor any other 

 external agency could safely be the sole or even the primary 

 source of research support. Universities, like individual research 

 investigators, profit from the financial independence that en- 

 ables them to pursue the research ideas that look most promis- 

 ing. University faculty members and officers need the financial 

 stability as well as the moral courage that enables them to say 

 "no" to an unwanted grant or contract. 



If universities are to be able to support a greater share of 

 basic research from their own funds, obviously they need more 

 money under their own direct control. For while many uni- 

 versities now have very much larger research budgets than they 

 had prior to World War II, they have relatively less unrestricted 

 money than in earlier years. There was repeated insistence that 

 out of the present federal research and development budget a 

 larger fraction should be assigned to basic research and should 

 be made available to the universities on an unrestricted basis. 

 The papers by Allen Astin and James Killian were most explicit 

 on this point. 



Government Control 



One of the deeply entrenched attitudes toward federal 

 support of education is that federal support is dangerously 

 likely to lead to federal control. But in contrast, most of the sym- 

 posium participants were not worried about dangers of federal 

 control of research supported by government funds. In fact, 



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