A Bird for Harvard

Harvard, in its nearly 300 years, has been called many names, but it has remained for a writer in the Detroit News to characterize it as one of the "vultures" hovering over an impoverished University of Michigan. But as the Bostonian continues the article he finds, to his relief, that the object of its attack is not Harvard, but the Michigan Legislature. The author is merely indulging in a little hyperbole to dramatize a rather intricate financial argument.

In 1867 the Michigan Legislature established the policy of allotting a fixed proportion of its tax revenue to the expenses of the university. First it was one-twentieth of a mill on the valuation of all taxable property in the state, and subsequently it was increased until the rate reached six-tenths of a mill in 1921. This system has assured the university of a adequate income. But this year Governor Brucker, in an effort to reduce state expenses, has provided only $4, 662.822 in his budget instead of the $5,068.285 calculated according to the mill rate law of 1921.

Such a reduction, the Detroit News writer holds, will force the university to keep its salary schedules at a minimum, thus leaving its best teachers open to "raids" from Harvard, Yale, Chicago and other endowed institutions whose incomes presumably remain undiminished. Although such competition in salaries is not so dangerous as it seems in Detroit, there is no doubt that the mill rate policy has greatly helped the University of Michigan by rendering it independent of political meddling and permitting it to maintain a freedom of academic thought and a high standard of scholastic requirements. Boston Herald.