University of Virginia Library

Federal Aid

This spring the Association of
American Universities, speaking for
42 leading institutions, both private
and public, appealed for comprehensive
support from the federal
government - something which the
same association scorned in the
nineteen-fifties. Its report argues
that no other source of support can
be expected, realistically, to grow
fast enough to fill the gap, particularly
if spending on higher education
is to rise from two per cent
of the gross national product to
three per cent in the decade ahead.
State tax systems are inelastic; competition
from other fields for private
giving is growing; charges for
tuition are rising fast and to raise
them much more would exclude
many of the underprivileged.

Block grants are sought from
Washington to supplement, not to
take the place of, these present
sources of income; diversity of
support is regarded as a safeguard
of academic freedom and autonomy,
even when it is only a
diversity in the sources of federal
funds. (At present every federal
department but the Post Office and
Treasury has relations with the universities,
mainly through contracts
for research.) Mr. Alan Pifer, the
president of the Carnegie Foundation
expects that by 1975 the federal
contribution, now about 23
per cent, will rise to 50 per cent of
the costs of higher education.

Because distinguished experts
believe that more federal help is
needed, it should not be imagined
that the institutions have got off
scot-free. Mr. Bunday has scolded
them for not managing their endowments
better and for not
making their accounts understandable
to the public; when he
examined private colleges in New
York State he found their plight
less desperate than he had been led
to believe and recommended only a
modest subsidy. Mr. Pifer has
spoken of the "almost total irrationality,
complexity and disorderliness"
of American higher education,
with its 2,200 institutions
of widely varying types and wildly
varying standards, its failure to add
up to anything like a national
system or to agree on any policies
to guarantee that the country's
needs are met. He was equally
scathing about the lack of federal
co-ordination.