Budget Populism

"AFTER carefully weighing priorities" for the 1969 budget, President Johnson reduced federal grants for college building programs in order to increase academic research grants and aid to college students. The cutback in construction funds is sure to cause many colleges to delay expansion plans, and the corresponding increase in the other federal programs seems too small to offset rising costs. "We will certainly be worse off under this budget than we were under last year's," says Arthur D. Trottenberg '48, assistant dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences for Resources and Planning.

Most of Harvard's major construction projects have been planned with the hope of obtaining federal grants to cover as much as one-third of their estimated cost. Particularly vulnerable to Johnson's budget reductions are the new library planned by the Graduate School of Education, two buildings at the Law School designed to provide more classroom and office space, and a Chemistry-Biology building to be built in the new Science Center. The Graduate School of Design and the Widener underground annex might also lose federal grants in the budget pinch. Mather House, however, will be financed completely with funds raised during the Program for Harvard College and has never been a candidate for government aid.

Unfortunately for Harvard the cuts coincide with a long-term effort in the government to distribute federal money across the country by concentrating grants more in the South and the Middle West. As Trottenberg says, Washington would rather "create more Harvards and more MIT's in other parts of the country than build up the ones in Cambridge."

Johnson's decision to reduce funds available for new research facilities has not affected federal support for academic research projects. Grants for research in colleges and universities will rise from 1.45 billion dollars to 1.64 billion dollars in fiscal 1969. The two government agencies which provide most of Harvard's research money--the National Institute of Health and the National Science Foundation--have had their budgets increased, although Trottenberg fears that "the small increase will just compensate for rising costs resulting from inflation."

DESPITE the President's promise in his Education Message last Monday to "eliminate race and income as barriers to higher learning," the budget does not provide a substantial increase in student aid. The U.S. Office of Education will receive an additional 112 million dollars to help students, but Johnson wants more than half of this increase to be used for interest and other payments under his "guaranteed loan program." Frugal congressmen may ignore the President's recommendation that banks receive a service charge of 35 dollars for the cost of paper work involved in administering the plan, since it seems unlikely that Congress will want to appear to be covering banking interests. The rest of Johnson's proposed increase will be largely eaten up by quick growth of the number of students who need financial help and the continued rise in college costs.

Peter K. Gunness, Director of Financial Aid, says that "there is a great deal of frustration among those of us concerned with student assistance" because "everyone who can help solve the problem assumes that someone else will."

Universities have not been able to increase their aid funds fast enough to keep them in balance with the rising student need. Private foundations have stopped funding programs like the National Merit Scholarships, which the Ford Foundation sponsored in the past, so that they can concentrate on research. State governments have generally assumed that the federal government will provide the necessary help; those that do have aid programs either do not fund them or require that students use the aid at state universities.

And Congress has been unwilling to consider any new plans which might offer long-term aid to college students. Unless the government passes a comprehensive aid program soon, students will have to bear a much greater share of college costs through more term-time and summer employment. Colleges are already asking families to contribute as much as they can.

Last February the American Council on Education pointed out the severe financial problems facing education and called for a gigantic increase in government aid to colleges and universities. Without that aid, the council warned, "the quality of higher education in this country cannot be improved; in fact, it cannot be sustained."

Although Johnson's rhetoric acknowledges the need for that assistance, his war-burdened budget does not provide it. And his cutbacks in construction funds strike Harvard in an area where it needs that help desperately.