Reagan Plan May Harm Universities

After initially praising the Reagan Administration's recent commitment to increase federal funding of scientists, scholars are now expressing concern that the policy may threaten academic freedom and independence by over emphasizing research that produces practical technology.

When President Reagan announced in his budget message last month a broad new plan to raise funding levels for the National Science Foundation, the federal agency that funds most basic science research, University administrators and scholars welcomed the plan in the hope that it would decrease the role of the Department of Defense in funding scientists.

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To Reagan, worried that the United States was losing its technological edge, the expensive costs of scientific research demanded that the government fund large projects involving teams of researchers and produce technology that would boost American competitiveness in the world marketplace.

Scholars and University administrators now say that this emphasis on practical research may pose as grave a threat to academia as the increasing reliance of institutions of higher learning on the Department of Defense.

"The politicization of research could push scholarly work towards looking for marketable products instead of searching for 'Veritas' for its own sake," Harvard lobbyist Parker Coddington said last month.

The federal government is an important supporter of research conducted at Harvard. A collection of different agencies funneled more than $132 million to Harvard researchers last year, picking up more than 18 percent of the University's total operating expenditures.

The Administration proposed in its FY 1988 Budget to boost funding for the NSF by 17 percent and to double it in five years.

"We applaud the Reagan Administration's increase in [research] funding, but we want to closely monitor theallocation of the funds," Vice President forGovernment and Community Affairs John Shattucksaid last week.

Much of the increases will likely fundengineering and computer science centers thatbring together members of industry and academe.Harvard currently operates such a center withMaryland University, receiving $2.2 million lastyear for work on robotics.

But as this money is used more often to fundlarge projects the small researchers, who areoften the most independent and creative, may losetheir ability to do scholarly work.

"These big Reagan projects threaten theintellectual autonomy and academic freedom of ourresearch universities," said Gerard Piel '37,founder of Scientific American and former chairmanof the board of the American Association for theAdvancement of Science.

"If you get these centers roosting on thecampuses, you won't have the standards ofexcellence among the faculty, and you will haveextraneous pressures from the outside affectingscholarship," Piel said.

And scholars say that even with the increasedfunding, the government's policy to support largeprojects will not be effective in the long run.

"Government funding must return its emphasis tofunding smaller basic research projects where themajority of scientific breakthroughs come from,"Piel said.

But administration officials say they are notresponsible for changing the nature of academicresearch. They say that federal money is onlyfollowing the trend set by the movement ofscientific research towards larger, more expensiveprojects.

"Our funding proposals reflect a dynamic thatis transforming science itself into research thatis extremely expensive, forcing scientists to workin multi-disciplinary research teams," saidSaundra Toye, NSF budget director.

Harvard's lobbyist Coddington shares Toye'sview of the changing nature of science. "There isno question that 'Big Science' is starting toreplace 'little science,' " he said.

Yet Coddington says that the government fundingprograms combined with the changing nature ofscientific research may mean the end to smallprojects.

Shattuck believes that this subtle attack onbasic research has not begun: "It's a question ifthese large scale projects will put pressure onsmaller researchers."

"For now there continues to be a balancebetween applied and basic research," Shattucksaid, warning that higher education officials mustremain vigilant to maintain this balance