GSAS Loses Federal Funds

Seniors expecting Federal money to finance their graduate education may face disappointment next year because the government has sharply cut back its aid programs.

Richard V. Jones, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS), said in an interview Wednesday that enrollment and funding for the GSAS had "decreased dramatically in the last two years" because of a decline in Federal support for higher education.

Jones recently attended a three-day conference of the Council of Graduate Schools in Washington. He said the major concern of the visiting deans of the nation's leading graduate schools was the precipitous loss of millions of dollars in Federal fellowships and trainee programs.

"The issue for the GSAS is the squeeze between a general tightening of the University's budget and a severe strain on our investment in scholarships caused by the loss of these Federal funds. There just aren't more resources to take up the slack," Jones said.

Enrollment Decline

"We had a dramatic decline in enrollment this year, probably more significant than most other places," Jones added. He attributed the decline, from 950 to less than 550, to the Faculty's decision in 1969 to decrease the overall size of the GSAS and to the decision of the Federal government to phase out direct aid to students.

"The Faculty subcommittee that recommended the enrollment decrease projected a drop to a class of 650 this year, but we have fallen more than 100 below that," Jones said. "There is a general feeling that this is too small an entering class," he added.

Jones said that Federal aid to education could be divided into two categories, research funding and fellowship and training programs. He said that Harvard had done "pretty well" in maintaining a steady level of research grants but that the fellowship programs had suffered "fantastic damage."

Grants and Fellowships

Jones said most of Harvard's Federal money came from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health. Since 1968 NSF fellowships have fallen from a high of 322 to 240 this year. Trainee grants, which provide money for students to attend a specific university, have declined at Harvard from over 70 to 33 and Jones said they will be "virtually gone by next year."

Penny Pinching

"We are running a hand-to-mouth operation in some ways," Robert V. Pound, chairman of the Physics Department, said yesterday. "I think the most serious prospect is a tendency against using funds for student fellowships and a tendency of funds to go away from physical sciences," he added.

Pound said that NSF fellowships had decreased significantly over the past two years in his department and that trainee programs had fallen to almost nothing. He indicated that research grants for the Physics Department had remained constant but said that inflationary pressures and the necessity of supporting students out of research funds had caused a strain.

Federal expenditures for research and development in chemistry have risen by 5 per cent over three years, but the actual purchasing power of the funds is down by 20 per cent, Ronald E. Vanelli '41, director of the Chemistry Laboratories, said yesterday. "We are losing half of our fellowships and just holding our own on research which is the same as losing ground," he said.