Carnegie Study on Aid to Education Combines Reports From 26 Colleges

(Established in 1960, the Carnegie study of the growing relations between the federal government and higher education concluded not with a series of proposals for "perfecting" the relationship, but with a series of questions based on possible dangers involved in federal aid. Perhaps its major usefulness lies in collecting statistics about the various kinds, uses, and effects of federal aid at the 26 colleges studied; some of these are described below, in selections from President Pusey's speech in Chicago Thursday.--Ed. note)

In fiscal 1960 agencies of the federal government spent about a billion dollars in institutions of higher education--$450 million for research, $44 million for facilities, $388 million for scholarships and fellowships, and $217 million for various programs of instruction. The large total does not include the amounts spent in separate laboratories, or other amounts provided for loans and in the distribution of surplus property. Were these added, the figure would be almost doubled.

Thus it is clear that income from the Federal Government has already come to play a large role in the finances of universities. Along with income from tuition, state appropriations, gifts, and income from endowment, it is now not only a source of support for research but also a major source of operating revenue, especially for some institutions with strong programs of graduate study.

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Of the 26 institutions co-operating in the study, Harvard was one of 12 universities public and private with large commitments to research, most having a broad range of strong graduate schools. The amount of federal money spent in each of these institutions for project research in the academic year 1959-60 ranged from a low of $5 million at the California Institute of Technology to $20 million at the University of Michigan.

These are large amounts, but their magnitude should occasion no surprise in view of the now widely recognized fact that more than 95 per cent of federal support for research in 2,000 institutions of higher learning goes to fewer than 100 such institutions. At the same time, it is necessary to remember that the more than a billion dollars spent by the federal government for research and development in colleges and universities--including the amounts spent in support of a number of very large off-campus laboratories under university management--is only a small fraction (less than 10 per cent) of the full amount allotted by the government for research and development. It is also important to remember that the large majority of colleges--and the fields of the social sciences and humanities in all institutions--have felt almost no impact from federal research programs. . . .

Project grant funds undergirded an indescribable range and variety of research activity in the institutions involved, though in every case only in limited areas within them. Much of the total was spent in medical and dental schools and in schools of public health. Virtually all the rest went to engineering and agricultural schools, or to departments of biology, astronomy, mathematics, chemistry, physics, and others of the natural sciences, and to psychology.

Law Untouched

Schools of law, business, and public administration, other graduate and professional schools, as well as colleges and divisions of arts and letters, were almost untouched by this very large flow of federal money. It is hard to see how the situation could have been otherwise, since thus far considerations of health, defense, economic development, and the need for scientific advance alone have had the power to release such funds. A third of the federal dollars going to Stanford and Princeton, 50 per cent of M.I.T.'s and 70 per cent of Michigan's were spent for research in engineering, while 54 per cent of Harvard's, 67 per cent of Louisville's and 93 per cent of Union's were spent in the medical area.

Twenty-eight different agencies of the government were listed as sponsors of at least one program in one or another of the 26 institutions of the Carnegie study. On the other hand, most of the $130.4 million in project research money going to these institutions came from a relatively small number of agencies. The National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense supplied the largest amounts. Following them -- though at some remove--came the National Science Foundation, the Atomic Energy Commission, the Department of Agriculture, and more recently--important only beyond the term of the study, but coming up fast--the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Project Research

Looking for the moment only at the underwriting of project research in the institutions themselves in the year 1959-60, the Department of Defense was the source of 70 per cent of the support Michigan received from the federal government that year, 78 per cent of San Diego's, 66 per cent of Princeton's, 62 per cent of Stanford's and 56 per cent of Texas'; while the National Institutes of Health provided 53 per cent of the support which came to Harvard, 72 per cent of Tulane's and 81 per cent of Louisville's.

Some of the institutions participating in the Carnegie study are further involved with Government as managers, along or with others, of separate laboratories set up to conduct programs of research, much of it often requiring an interdisciplinary approach. . . .

Measured in terms of dollars, support for research and development, either in the institutions themselves or in laboratories affiliated with them, now running at an annual rate of well over a billion dollars, easily provides the main avenue by which federal funds now come into educational institutions. But there are other significant, if lesser byways through which federal funds come to institutions of higher learning.

Important sums are made available as fellowships and loans, and as research assistantships, to help students further their work, and in other forms to reimburse faculty people for consulting and investigative activities, though programs providing these kinds of help are relatively small in size. In only four cases in the Carnegie study did they exceed $1 million. . . .

The federal agencies with the largest appropriations to allocate to research and development are those responsible for defense, health and science.