GSAS, in Money Trouble, Digs Into Its Ford Funds

The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences will spend over a million dollars of Ford Foundation money this year to offset heavy cutbacks in funds from other outside sources.

This money will come from a seven year, $4.4 million grant for Harvard Graduate Prize Fellows, which the Ford Foundation announced in the spring of 1967.

Harvard spent only a little more than a quarter of a million dollars of the grant last year, according to Reginald H. Phelps, associate dean of GSAS. Nearly four times that amount will be spent in 1968-69.

Predictions about future funds in the GSAS are generally optimistic. The Dean's Office expects no government cutbacks and anticipates a slow rise in other funds.

The only possible difficulty is that the Ford Foundation money--which supports the Graduate Prize Fellows--cannot continue to be spent at the rate of a million a year if it is to last seven years.

Ironically it was the Ford Foundation which caused large cutbacks in other available fellowships. Last fall the Foundation refused to renew its annual $5 million grant to the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship Fund, which was dependent on Ford for 95 per cent of its revenue.

As a result Harvard GSAS now has 15 Wilson fellows, many of whom are not even given financial aid, compared to 123 last year, who received close to $500,000.

Another serious cut in GSAS funds this year came in the Government Title Four Fellowship Program. Only 45 Title Four fellows were accepted this year, compared to 85 last year.

The Ford Foundation money has eased the burden of these cuts by suporting all the GSAS Graduate Prize fellows. Funds from the Faculty and from other outside endowments are therefore available for regular Harvard Fellowships.

The National Science Foundation, a program which supplies almost $2 million to GSAS science students, has slightly increased its support of Harvard students. There are 100 more NSF fellows at Harvard than anywhere else, and there is no reason to expect any decrease in the near future, Thomas K. Sisson, assistant dean of GSAS, said recently.