THE UNIVERSITY OFCHICAGO 0 1ECOEDMarch 21, 1973 An Official Publication Volume VII, Number 3CONTENTS37 THE STATE OF THE UNIVERSITYBy Edward H. Levi, PresidentTHE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGOFOUNDED BY JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER© 1973 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO RECORDSTATE OF THE UNIVERSITYBy EDWARD H. LEVI, PRESIDENTFebruary 23, 1973In this land of annual reports, a yearly review isto be expected. It conforms to the ideas we allhave concerning accountability. Perhaps it fitsthe modern faith in managerial measurements.But the time-scale is inappropriate, suggestingtoo easy accomplishments or concern for thetrivial unless, indeed, it is taken to be a reminderthat routine circumstances or unusual pressuresmust be handled in such a way as to protect andfulfill the reasons for the University's existence.If that is so, we must use this occasion to remindand rethink concerning the qualities and valueswhich give our University strength and purpose,and in that perspective reexamine our conditionand direction.Budget ConstraintsWe are in the third year of a period which hasrequired careful budget constraints. Excludingthe Hospitals and Clinics, and certain self-balancing items, total expenditures were held to an increase of 3.6 percent in 1970-71, and to anincrease of less than 1 percent in 1971-72. Thecurrent budget which we are living with hasaccepted a decrease for this year of 1.5 percent.These figures should be seen against the background that for the ten-year period up to 1971-72, restricted and unrestricted expenditures ofthe University, not including government contracts or grants, rose 165 percent.Two years ago in the annual report I com-This is an expanded version of an address presentedby President Levi to the Faculty Senate on February23, 1973. mented on the educational value and the economic results flowing from a faculty-student ratiowhich, from a level of 1 to 7.5 in 1961-62 whenthere were 829 faculty and 6,194 students, roseto a high of 1 to 8.5 in 1966, but had been declining steadily since, and in 1970-71 stood at1 to 6.7. That decline appears to have been arrested. In 1970-71, faculty size was 1,140; thisyear it is 1,099. Student enrollment on the quadrangles was 7,625 two years ago; this year it is7,635. The ratio now is 1 to 6.9; it is still amatter of concern. This is not to suggest anyautomatic formula, or to forget the somewhatdifferent relationships which, of necessity, existin various parts of the University including, forexample, in the Hospitals and Clinics. But it is amatter which must be watched.Within the budget constraints, average facultysalaries, figured on a three-quarters basis andwith fringe benefits added, have moved from$21,529 two years ago to $24,105 this year. Overthe same period, tuition charges in the Collegehave increased from $2,325 to $2,625; from $2,-475 to $2,925 for the Graduate School of Business, and to $2,775 for the other Schools andDivisions. A further increase of $225 has beenannounced for next year. In view of the increasing body of opinion which believes, as I do not,that students, individually or in the aggregate,should carry the entire costs of their higher education, I feel constrained to report that a recentstudy, allocating one-third of the costs of theUniversity to instruction — which is an under-allocation — showed that tuition revenues failedto meet these expenses by almost $9 million annually. Those who urge that students shouldcarry the entire cost look to modified loan programs to make this possible. In the present year,in comparison with the amount available in 1969-70, there has been a decline of more than $1.537million in the annual amount available to ourstudents for fellowships and scholarships.The principal factor in this decrease is in thereduction of the federal program to the extent ofmore than $1.25 million. For example, federallyfinanced students in the Physical Sciences Division fell from 183 in 1966-67 to 37 this year. Inthe Graduate School of Education, the numberfell from 61 in 1969-70 to none today. Therewas a decline also in special foundation funds forscholarships and fellowships. The overall decrease would have been greater, but University-restricted funds were used to cushion this decline.On the other hand, available student loan fundsdid rise over the period by an amount slightlygreater than the decline in scholarships and fellowships. The proportion of loans to fellowshipsand scholarship grants thus has risen from one-fifth in 1969-70 to about one-third in the presentyear. But the governmental National Direct Student Loan Program, which has provided most ofthe funds for increased student borrowing, isnow scheduled for abolition. For the last eightmonths, the University has been developing, andhopes to perfect, arrangements which will makeit possible for our students to secure loans up to$2,500 a year under an alternative governmentplan for insured student loans. The terms, however, will be less favorable.I well remember some years ago when potential donors of scholarships or fellowships believed gifts in this form would be no longernecessary because the federal government hadassumed the responsibility. In this area, as wellas others, we must continue to emphasize that aprivate university requires private support. Federal grants and contracts are of enormous importance. But it is worth remembering that forthe entire budget of this University, federalgrants and contracts amounted to 29.1 percent in1969-70; 26.8 percent in 1970-71; and 25.3 percent in 1971-72.Maximizing the University's StrengthThe policy of careful constraints which we havebeen following for some time is intended to further and maximize the University's strength. Themost severe cutbacks in expenditures for the regular academic budgets were worked out three yearsago. We felt then it was necessary to do this, without waiting for future drastic alarms, if we were to preserve for our University the potential for flexibility essential for quality. It was for this reasonthat these reports to you, contrary to the adviceof many friends I admire, were filled with arecital of earthly matters shocking to an earliertradition. The plan which was worked out reliedheavily and, I believe, successfully on unusualsupport from the University's resources; it anticipated the transition period which now clearlyhas come for higher education. Trustees andfaculty have taken most seriously the obligationof measuring each step in terms of the qualityand assured future for our institution. We cansay, I suppose, that nothing less would have beenexpected for this place, but this does not diminishour gratitude. We regard what has been done asa platform from which to move ahead.What, then, is our present state? Such semi-objective standards as there are would say this isone of the strong intellectual universities of theworld. This is true whether one looks at studiesor appraisals which have been made of the institution as a whole, or at the honors accordedthe faculty. An astonishing circumstance is theincreased number of applications for admissionby students for most of the major areas of theUniversity last year. If one looks at the studieswhich have been made in the aggregate of graduate departments, of the contributions to undergraduate education, of the standing of each ofour professional schools (including The PritzkerSchool of Medicine which is within the Divisionof the Biological Sciences) , it is typical to find aranking within the top five within the UnitedStates. We should acknowledge immediately thatsome of these ratings are out of date. Many ofyou will realize that particularly for the professional schools and some departments we canclaim more than this, and that many departments, although distinguished or strong, havebeen placed lower in the scale. We are, after all,experts on our own inadequacies, and what iswrong with our University. This is one of ourcharming and useful characteristics. But anothercharacteristic of the University is that the partscan be exceedingly responsive to the coherentintellectual resource of the entire institutionwhich they can draw upon, and while one wouldhope that this process would move more swiftly,there is no reason why, under proper arrangements, any part, appropriately in this University,should lag behind. We must see that these arrangements are made.38A Tradition of Academic ExcellenceThe idea of the coherent intellectual resource,organized for continuing inquiry, is imprintedwithin this University and is our inheritance. TheUniversity was begun in controversy and withdetermination, deliberate about its intent andorganization. The entire University was to becommitted to basic research, not at someone'shire, but because "the perception and resolutionof the most significant issues of our time dependin large degree on the formulation of fresh questions, the acquisition of new knowledge, and theadvancement of self-directed education." Theentire University was to be committed to teaching in order to achieve a coherence of understanding within, to engage students in these waysof discovery, and to keep fresh in this manner"the accumulated treasures of the thoughts ofmankind." The unity of teaching and researchwas a fundamental point. That this tradition andthis purpose are still with us is reflected in arecent faculty report which calls the distinguishing mark of this University its devotion of "mostof its powers to the advancement of research andscholarship and to the education of students whowill be able adventurers in the discovery of newforms of knowledge."The conception of the unity of investigationand instruction, as it was understood, had manyimplications: the organization of knowledge, theplace of the disciplines, the choice of the faculty,the size and shape of the institution, the physicalfacilities. The University was set on a path ofcontinued questioning about the organization ofknowledge — an organization which the processesof inquiry, the struggle for understanding anddiscovery would change, and which would giverise to new judgments of what was important orinsignificant or superfluous. Out of these concerns came the encouragement for the regrouping and formation of new disciplines, forarrangements which brought related disciplinestogether, and a special seriousness about undergraduate education. All faculty were to engage ininstruction and investigation; all were to be creative scholars. A post was to be left unoccupiedif a scholar of that excellence could not be secured. In comparison with the rest of the University, the undergraduate College was to besmall. When the University began, the Collegehad one-third of the students. The College woulddraw upon the resources of the entire institution. The physical facilities were to be arranged so asto bring into the closest proximity formal instructional and research space. One of Harper's earlyideas was to have all the buildings linked together, and it is interesting to see the extent towhich this was carried out in the original buildings. This was to be a recognition from the beginning of the importance of collaboration andmutual learning among scholars of differentareas, and a symbol of this University's preoccupation with interrelationships among thedisciplines.No one who knows the record of this University can doubt the continuing power and presenceof this tradition and conception in its history.The overriding commitment of the Universitygave it the possibility of flexibility and innovation. Through the years it brought to the University a faculty which at various times wasdescribed as the most distinguished ever assembled. New disciplines were created. At a timewhen professional education was a bastion ofseparatism, the professional schools of The University of Chicago were interdisciplinary andwere concerned with basic problems of theoryand research. It is not often remembered that thework of Roscoe Pound, in what came to beknown as the jurisprudence of social engineering,or a jurisprudence of social interests, had itsorigins here (when he was a member of the Lawfaculty) through his collaboration with AlbionSmall, who held the first professorship of Sociology in this or any other university. This wasthe milieu which established the University asthe teacher of teachers with such results as thehigh percentage of the graduates of The PritzkerSchool of Medicine who populate the medicalfaculties of the country — the highest for full-timefaculty in the country — and has placed us second,as of 1971 at least, in the baccalaureate originsof the National Academy of Sciences. It was thistradition which helped greatly in the insistenceupon an evolving basic program in the College,and the adaptation of the seminar as a focus forundergraduate instruction, the centralizing organization of the Divisions, the creation of thefull-time medical faculty, the formation of theinterdisciplinary research institutes, beginningwith the Oriental Institute and represented in thePhysical Sciences by the James Franck Instituteand the Enrico Fermi Institute. There is no doubtof this influence; the question is the extent towhich we permit it or help it to manifest itself.39The CollegeIt is the College which "should be the center andthe chief unifying force of the University," aUniversity faculty committee has written. "Thisis not because the College is that part of theUniversity which takes teaching, or takes liberaleducation, as its special duty ... all parts of theUniversity are teaching agencies and in all partsthe teachers are engaged in the pursuit of newknowledge. But it is in the College as nowhereelse that the parts must converge and try tounderstand what they are doing as parts of thewhole. It is in the College that the self -examiningquestions must be faced not as an optional interest in an abstract possibility, but as an immediatenecessity, as theory-in-practice. It is in the College that the questions are extraordinarily difficult, because as each part is in continual motiona satisfactory resolution of forces is never possible and the College is in endless restless turmoil."Our College has been a leader in liberal education. It has drawn upon the intellectual resourcesof the University to create required year-longgeneral education sequences in the four majordisciplines and to develop programs of specialmastery for undergraduates within and acrossthese disciplines. The pressures of a researchuniversity have not permitted these courses andprograms to be viewed as unchangeable. Theyare regarded rather as adventures in inquiry notonly for the students who take them, but forscholars who are challenged to place new interpretations and discovery in a larger focus. In thelast few years the College has led the way inunifying and generalizing the education in Biology as an integrated science, cutting across thedivisional departmental lines. This program servesas a model of what can be accomplished if separate disciplines have moved into sufficient genuine relationship. The program can reflect, butit can also encourage this coalescence. Buildingon prior preliminary efforts, this year has seenthe introduction of a new sequence for the Physical Sciences called Matter, Energy, and Organization. It, too, depends on the full participationof active research scientists. It is a serious effortto bring non-science students to an understandingof the beauty and structure of a discipline fromthe standpoint of its continuing creation andapplication. It is a major advance in the teachingof science as a liberal art. It does not solve the problem of the two cultures for some of our ablestudents, but it is on the way.There has been considerable progress, also, inthe College, in the preparation of more advancedprograms which respond to the need for new arrangements of subjects otherwise scattered amongseparate Departments and Schools. Last year Imentioned the curriculum in the discipline of theHumanities which applies humanistic techniquesto the literature of Belle Lettres, History, Philosophy, and Science. This year faculty approvalhas been gained for Politics, Rhetoric, Economics, and Law: Liberal Arts of the Practical.It will bring together specially prepared sequencesin Economics, Law, courses in political thoughtand in the art of argumentation and communication. A new program in Humanities is being developed for Religious Studies which will involvecourses in the kinds of problems involved, theways of interpretation, the logic of particulartraditions, religious literature, and expression.And work is now going on for a combined approach to Human Behavior and Institutionswhich will view man physiologically, then asindividual, and finally in terms of group behavior.The College has attempted to provide someavenues and means for shortening the time-span.It has slightly increased the number of early entrants to 25 over 19 last year. I am told thatapproximately 50 percent of our students do takeadvantage of accrediting examinations. Eightjoint degree or professional option programs havebeen worked out by the College with graduateor professional areas. The areas involved areLinguistics, Economics, Library Science, Mathematics, the Graduate School of Education,Romance Languages, the Graduate School ofBusiness, and Law. It must be said that the number of students is exceedingly small, except forthe Graduate School of Business where there are29 students in the program. But the numbers donot measure the opportunity for the individualstudent who now has a more formalized road foran advantage which, in an informal way, thisUniversity has often given. Last year three College students graduated with concurrent bachelor's and master's degrees in Mathematics. Iregret to say that in the area of what is probablythe greatest need for providing an alternativeroad to shorten the time — namely medical training — a proposed joint program has, as yet, notbeen adopted.40A Central ProblemA central problem which the University faces ishow to organize its work and arrange its facilities, old or to be acquired, so as to give thegreatest support to the related research and instructional functions. This is a perennial problem.It is a dominant consideration whenever theUniversity projects its role into the future. It maybe helpful to review some of the recent changesand proposed plans.Inevitably one must begin with the JosephRegenstein Library, 35 years in the dreaming forit, the greatest facility of its kind in the world.The availability of this great library has made itpossible for us to bring together for easier scholarly access most of the published materials whichthe University has in the Social Sciences andHumanities broadly conceived, and it has vastlyimproved the conditions for work of studentsand faculty. One consequence of the RegensteinLibrary has been the recent move to that building of approximately 125,000 volumes of generalhistorical and humanistic interest from SwiftHall. Another striking consequence is that theHarper- Wieboldt complex is now being renovatedto become an administrative center for the College with student facilities, the undergraduatereading room, faculty offices, and seminar rooms.This facility will help us bring together many faculty in the same general area as, for example, theDepartment of English, and will remove some ofthe barriers which have existed, because of theproblems of location, among faculty and betweenfaculty and students. This is a process which wehope to be able to continue eventually in the adjoining buildings of Classics and Goodspeed.Next Autumn, the Cochrane-Woods Art Center with the David and Alfred Smart Gallery willbe completed. It will give to the Art Departmentfor the first time the proper facilities with ateaching gallery which it first asked for in 1904.The plan calls for an adjoining structure to housethe Music Department, then for an Art Libraryto be placed on top of both of them, and then astudent theater to be built next door. The facilities of the Art Department have already beenaugmented by the addition which has been completed to the Midway Studios.The new Cummings Life Science Center, 11stories high, also will be finished next Autumn.It will provide superb laboratory facilities whichwill make it possible to bring together scientists with similar research interests from the Departments of Biochemistry, Microbiology, and Biophysics now housed in six separate buildings. TheCummings Life Science Center has to be seen asonly one part of a massive effort to bring to theDivision of the Biological Sciences and ThePritzker School of Medicine some of the facilitieswhich are required. Principal among these are:the Surgery and Brain Research Pavilion; theUltrastructural Laboratory, supportive of thework of biologists and physicists developing theuse of new forms of the electron scanning microscope and of a possible proton scanning microscope; cancer virus research laboratories; anambulatory care center; modernization of Chicago Living-in Hospital, and the expansion andimprovement of facilities for Radiology and Nuclear Medicine.The creation some years ago of the HenryHinds Laboratory for the Geophysical Sciencesmade it possible then to bring together scientistspreviously scattered in many different buildings.Albert Pick Hall for International Studies, completed one year and a half ago, is performing amost important similar function for social scientists with related interests. Rosenwald Hall, fromwhich the geographers moved to Albert PickHall, and from which the geophysicists moved tothe Henry Hinds Laboratory, in turn has becomethe center, gorgeously remodeled, of the Graduate School of Business, with an archway linkageto Business East and then on to the Social Sciences Research Building.The University has been concerned for sometime with the inadequacies of the facilities provided for the Physical Sciences Division. Theproblem seemed too difficult to solve all at oncein 1965 when the ten-year plans for the University were drawn up. It was then decided to attempt to improve the situation in two stages. Thefirst stage successfully brought together the widelyscattered faculty of the Geophysical Sciences andprovided essential laboratory space for the Chemistry Department. Reserved for the second stagewere steps to relieve the overcrowding of theRyerson-Eckhart complex and to cure the unfortunate separation, so contrary to the conception of the University, which the present buildingarrangements force between the teaching functions of the Department of Physics and its research functions. The solution to this problemwould be the construction of a Physical SciencesCenter next to the Hinds Laboratory.41Revitalizing the Divisional StructurePhysical facilities, of course, are only justified ifthey importantly further important activities. Thestructures which I have mentioned have been putto this test. But it hardly needs saying that themaximization of the University's strength involvesdifferent problems as well. Two years ago DeanJacobson appointed a faculty committee to review the organization of the Basic BiologicalSciences. That committee reported in February1972. "A central conclusion and main theme ofthe committee," the report states, "is that a considerable degree of unity, cohesiveness, and flexibility in the Basic Biological Sciences are absolutely essential both now and in the futureand this requires both administrative steps andexplicit policies that go beyond simple exhortations of collegiality. There would seem to be littledoubt that biology is becoming in many ways asingle discipline or at least a multi-dimensionalcontinuum of overlapping disciplines." "At ourown institution," the report goes on the say, "departments overlap in their (legitimate) interests;much of our divisional strength presently liesacross departmental lines; we find ourselvesunable to keep teaching responsibility confinedwithin departments; and there is an increasingneed for kinds of laboratories and of expensivespecialized facilities that are not unique to individual departments. If our divisional enterprisein the basic biological sciences is to be strongand balanced, there is the need, especially in theface of current restraints, to consider the impactof departmental appointments on overall programs and responsibilities in the basic sciences,and one can only suspect that our future abilitiesto recruit outstanding students and faculty in newfrontier areas of biology will depend on ourattractiveness on a divisional basis." Among therecommendations of the committee was "thatthere be fewer and larger basic science departments." The committee recognized the need forthe "continuing use of interest groups formedfor scholarly purposes on a nondepartmentalbasis." At the present time the Division is considering recommendations for two consolidationsin the light of the direction of this general report.Biophysics, Theoretical Biology, and part ofPhysiology will be brought together in one department. Pharmacology and the rest of Physiology, it is proposed, will form another.The report of the faculty committee on the Organization of the Basic Biological Sciencessuggests questions which are appropriate for allthe Divisions. Questions of this type are now before the Social Sciences Division with the recommendation of its faculty committee that in viewof the presence of something like 65 psychologists and closely related behavioral scientists invarious parts of the University, including theBusiness School, the Department of Psychiatry,the Department of Biology, the Department ofEducation, and the Committee on Human Development, as well as the Department of Psychology, there be a serious effort at regrouping.But the number and overlapping of departmentsare not the only issues which the basic biologyreport may be taken to raise. Inherent in thereport are questions as to the reality of the possible collective leadership role of the Divisionsthemselves. This role, no doubt, is a changingone, depending on many external and internalfactors and other supporting arrangements. Theearly organization of the Social Sciences Divisionsurely reflected a belief in the possibility ofinterchange and divisional leadership. The SocialSciences Research Building, the first of its kind,was intended as a divisional laboratory, givenadded meaning through the use of multi-department seminars, interdisciplinary committees, andthe integrative force of the Social Sciences Research Divisional Grants Committee. This maywell be a time when, as the report seems to suggest, it may be necessary to give new vitality tothe divisional structures. I am, myself, convincedthat the institution of the Collegiate Divisions atthe undergraduate level has increased our abilityto solve educational problems. The main reasonfor this is because of the facilitating efforts ofthe Masters themselves. One wonders whethersimilar efforts at the divisional level might notprove to be useful.A Coordinated ApproachThrough the years various structures have beendeveloped throughout the University to aid in themaximization of strength. The Oriental Exploration Fund grew out of the Department of SemiticLanguages; the Oriental Institute grew out of theExploration Fund. The Institute continues as astriking example of interdisciplinary work whichcould not be carried on without some such organization. The last year saw the publication of42the eleventh volume of the monumental AssyrianDictionary. When completed, the Dictionary, begun in 1921, will contain 21 volumes. The colossal task of the Epigraphic Survey of theperishing monuments of Egypt begun in 1905still goes on. At the same time important arch-eological expeditions, joint with other groups inmany cases, are continuing, and potentially important discoveries have been made recently inEastern Saudi Arabia casting new light on theorigins of early Mesopotamian civilization.In 1946 the three institutes in the PhysicalSciences were organized. One of these later became a Department; a second changed its direction and took a different name. Today, despiteserious losses, the James Franck Institute is outstanding in its work in theoretical and experimental solid state physics; one of its recentachievements is in the development of molecularbeam studies, analyzing the interaction betweenindividual molecules. The Enrico Fermi Institutehas facilitated interdisciplinary and cooperativeresearch in experimental and theoretical particlephysics, inquiries into nuclear chemistry, the development of radically different electron microscopes, and in space physics and astrophysics. Atthe present time two satellites, one of which is aJupiter probe, are aloft with experiments by Chicago scientists using instruments developed herefor determining the distribution of the kinds ofatoms involved in the cosmic rays. Two additional satellite stations with experiments by ourscientists are planned to be in observation duringthe next ten months. The work in particle physicsis greatly influenced by the opportunity for experiments made possible by the National Accelerator Laboratory. The Institute's cyclotron magnet has been moved to the National AcceleratorLaboratory during the last year to aid in theprobing of protons and neutrons.These institutes were important responses tothe needs for collaborative research, special facilities, and advanced training; needs which in thecase of the Oriental Institute have involved acontinuation of coordinated research over several generations of scholars. So also the value ofthe work of the Yerkes Observatory in determining the distance scale of our galaxy and the membership in star clusters has been greatly enhancedby the longevity made possible by a collaborativelaboratory in one place. The 40-inch refractor,modernized in operational procedures, still remains the best instrument of its kind. At thesame time, the development of astrophysics has required new arrangements not only involvingthe shared use of other observatories, but also achanging organization of instruction and researchas between Yerkes and the University campus.In the same way, the opportunities made possiblefor basic biological research by the scanningelectron microscope have required plans for anew kind of collaboration among biologists andphysicists.Over many years at least, and with the rarestof exceptions (I know of only one), all facultyappointments to the institutes have been jointwith the departments. A faculty committee recently reviewing the "Criteria for Academic Appointments" has written: "Appointments initiatedby institutes, interdisciplinary committees, etc.,should be made as joint appointments with one ofthe teaching departments, and no member of thefaculty should be able to find shelter from teaching by virtue of institute or committee appointments alone." The institutes, with creative powerof their own, have thus been extensions of thefaculty work in instruction and research. Thesame direction has been followed for international area studies where committees — some ofthem have now become departments — wereformed cutting across existing departments andtwo of the divisions — and with such centers asthe Population Research Center or the Centerfor Urban Studies. This policy has been in furtherance not only of the combination of teachingand research, but for maintaining a certainbreadth and University-orientation for facultyappointments. This policy has imposed some barrier to the assembling of experts for particularprojects. It has imposed hurdles in the way offaculty appointments which groups of facultywish to sponsor, but where all the necessary departmental approvals could not be obtained. Ihave no doubt it has stood in the way of somefaculty appointments which should have beenmade. The problems are the preservation ofquality; the recognition that "one of the greatadvantages of The University of Chicago in thepresent situation of universities in the world isthat it is relatively small"; the importance thatover-rigidity not prevent the University frompursuing "important new fields of study and research about which there are genuine and well-placed intellectual convictions in the Universityand outstanding intellectual capacities to do themoutstandingly well." The policy is consistent witha coordinated approach and the sharing of responsibility seriously taken.43The Role of Committees"Interdisciplinary" committees play an importantrole in the University. These committees, in fact,may be no more "interdisciplinary" than a department is or could be. They can represent afresh approach with a new evaluation and a newimpetus. They can involve combinations for in-depth studies similar to the advantages whichinstitutes can provide. They can be a helpful reminder that, as new problems are faced, one ofthe essential results of the process of researchand teaching may be the "devising and developing (of a) common discipline to connect andtransform existing disciplines." Moreover, theprocess of instruction, itself, may require recognition of new points of entry into disciplines, andnew ways of understanding significance. In addition to the undergraduate Committee on Discipline of the Humanities, the Humanities Division has five such committees: General Studiesin the Humanities; History of Culture; Ideas andMethods; the Committee on the ConceptualFoundations of Science; and the Committeeon Comparative Studies in Literature. It alsonow has the Departments of Far Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Near Eastern Languagesand Civilizations, and South Asian Languagesand Civilizations, created out of older departments and various area committees, including theCommittee on South Asian Studies once in theDivision of the Social Sciences. In addition, theCommittee on Far Eastern Studies operates asan additional support and informational mechanism for work scattered among departments inboth the Social Sciences and Humanities Divisions.The committees run the full range of more orless stable arrangements — almost similar to departments — to transient groupings. Like the departments, their directions may be somewhatdependent upon sources of support. The recentgrowth of the non-western area departments atthe University would not have been possiblewithout substantial increased support, which, unfortunately, is now vanishing. As a faculty committee correctly reports: "There is a great temptation, both when financial support is plenteousand when it is scarce, to take on new members,new fields of study and research . . ." This is nota temptation a private university can completelyavoid, nor should it. Presumably it can avoidentering into areas which are not properly on its agenda in terms of its competence, the relationship to the purposes of the University, and theperipheral costs of diffusion and distraction. Evenso, what remains is a risk and a guess as to thefinancial means.Committees, undoubtedly, are subject to morescrutiny than the departments; as has been written "their purposes should constantly be reappraised in the light of the changing needs ofthe University." But the same should be said ofthe departments. The special function whichcommittees can perform is to help in the formulation of new priorities, and to act as coordinating and facilitating devices in the large or forparticular studies. In this sense, a multiplicity ofcommittees may indicate both a need and anattempt to supply a remedy. But a multiplicityof committees in a single division along with amultiplicity of departments, suggests some failureto translate into operational terms priority determinations as to problems to be studied in orderto maximize resources, and perhaps suggests afailure to confront questions concerning the theoretical structure and relationships of the disciplines in terms of these problems. Possibly,reflecting the state of the humanities today, theDivision of the Humanities at the University, inaddition to the committees mentioned, has twelveDepartments. I commented last year on the abortive attempt in 1951 to restructure the Departments into four: Philosophy, Literature and theArts, Language, and History. I believe the question now is whether, if the multiplicity of departments is to be maintained, some mechanismcannot be introduced at the divisional level toencourage an overview more consistent with thebasic relationships. The faculty committee on theProblems and Scope of Graduate Work has recommended there be a meeting among departmental chairmen within a division at least oncea year "to discuss any problems of conflicts ofinterest between departments, as well as explorations of areas of inquiry which may presentlyfall between departments and thus be overlookedby the University." With due respect, that recommendation seems to me to be insufficient tohandle the problem.The Division of the Social Sciences has eightdepartments as well as the Committee on HumanDevelopment and the Committee on SocialThought, and a number of centers and cross-department committees. Unless it be the Divisionitself, there is no mechanism for encouraging an44overview. Nevertheless, the Committee for theComparative Study of New Nations has playedan integrative role in the tradition of the generalizing Social Sciences. The work in UrbanStudies has resulted in new formulations transforming and relating a number of separate disciplinary approaches. The Divisional Master'sprogram, with its emphasis on policy and publicaffairs, has new importance as a result of therecognition of the need for a more broadly conceived curriculum cutting across departmentallines. This program has gone from 30 studentsto 140 in three years, and should go much higherif we take seriously the duty of educating citizen-experts whose roles will cross disciplinary boundaries, and whose preparation is well within thecommitments which the University has alreadymade. In this setting, collaboration within theDivision and with the professional schools hasresulted in a proposal for a more intensive graduate or professional program in public policywith imputs from economics, organization theoryand political science, law, and statistical analysis.The sharing of new techniques for evaluation;the emphasis on factors influencing human conduct and the behavior of institutions; the rationalutility maximization of economics, applicable toother areas; the responsibility imposed when policy recommendations carry implications beyondthe base of a single discipline — all these couldserve to carry forward the conception of thecommonality of the Social Sciences so powerfully advanced by Charles Merriam within andfrom this University.I have spoken of fragmentation partly in termsof its consequences on the resources of theUniversity. This same aspect, however, can beput in terms of the purposes to be served. It isone thing to endorse the necessary freedom ofthe individual scholar, and quite another to setup or maintain administrative structures which,while justified on historical or professionalgrounds — unless there are counter-balancing influences — distort the seeing, solution, and understanding of larger intellectual issues. This distortion is one of the ways the University hasan effect upon society. It not only narrows thehorizons of research, but it frustrates education.It helps to create an atmosphere in which partialanswers are taken as solutions, and in whichcareful communication among disciplines, necessary for correction and growth, is thought to beunnecessary. The distortion encourages a tech nocracy which, while it has virtue, is not thevirtue of a university, or at least this kind ofuniversity.The University: A Special UnityThe last few years have been a period of intensive review by many of the professionalschools of their programs. The School of SocialService Administration has shifted its orientationto once again bring into central focus basic fundamental welfare problems. It has opened itsdoctorate program again to students who havereceived prior training in the basic disciplines byremoving the rule that such candidates musthave received a Master's degree from a schoolof social work. The more critical and broadenedapproach is probably one of the reasons for themarked increase of students from other partsof the University now taking courses in theSchool — a rise from 20 to 120 in the period oftwo years.The Divinity School is now implementing amajor rethinking of its programs, more closelyintegrating the two advance degree curricula,professional and research; deepening the relationships with other parts of the University, although this has always been strong, through theappointment of associate faculty; and removingsome of the separatism which has grown up between programs within the School — a tendencytoward divisive autonomy which is a commonphenomenon not limited to professional schools.The School of Education at The University ofChicago was reinstated in 1958 as a small unitto help coordinate the teacher-training aspects ofwork carried out throughout the entire University and within the Department of Education.The experience of the School during the past fewyears — a period of rapid expansion, special burdens, and then the withdrawal of support — affirms the wisdom of the University's long-termapproach.The Graduate Library School, having restoredits direction to a more fundamental inquiry intoinformation systems and the needs of scholarship,has successfully completed this transition, developed joint programs with the School of Business and the Graduate School of Education, andlaunched, in addition to its distinguished doctoralwork, an interesting Certificate of AdvancedStudy program providing for one year of ac-45ademic work beyond the Master's degree, designed for those students who wish to supplement their training, but do not wish to make therelatively long-term commitment and completeresearch orientation required by the doctoralprogram. This latter program is an interestingexample of the possible kind of direction discussed by the faculty Committee on the Problems and Scope of Graduate Work. The Committee pointed to the need of what it said "mightbe tentatively named — for lack of a better alternative — a grand master's degree." I have already commented on possible similar developments within the Division of the Social Sciences.One of these developments in the field of publicpolicy is also being implemented by the Graduate School of Business, by its establishment of aCenter for the Management of Public and Nonprofit Enterprise, an academic and research unitoffering a program leading to the Master's degree. Like most of the professional schools, twoyears ago the Graduate School of Business completed a review of it entire curriculum. It has instituted joint programs with the Graduate Library School and with the Law School. Itscollaborative efforts within the University arenumerous, including, for example, its outstanding Center for Mathematical Studies in Businessand Economics. The Law School, through itsCenter for Studies in Criminal Justice and thelournal of Legal Studies, has deepened its collaboration — in historical and empirical studies —with scholars in the Social Sciences, and hasbeen an important factor in the development ofthe proposed program for the College in theLiberal Arts of the Practical, and of graduatework in urban studies and in public policy.A special word is appropriate for The PritzkerSchool of Medicine. The Pritzker School is partof the Division of the Biological Sciences. Thefaculty committee on the Organization of theBasic Biological Sciences has recommended "thatthe present system of utilizing a common Division of Biological Sciences faculty for teaching undergraduates, graduate and medical schoolcourses be retained." The report comments that"there is widespread and deep feeling, recognizedby the committee, that our medical school hasbenefited immeasurably from its close connection with the basic science departments. In particular, this has facilitated the joint M.D./ Ph.D.programs, and enabled an extraordinary numberof medical students to pursue independent re search in medical sciences. Furthermore, manyfaculty in basic sciences consider their programsenriched by the close interaction with membersof the clinical faculties that is enhanced byshared teaching responsibilities." The committeerecognizes that the "quality of the medicalschool program is the shared responsibility of thetotal Division of Biological Sciences faculty."The Pritzker Medical School has increased itsenrollment from 353 students to 415 this year.At the same time there has been no slackening inthe intensity and scope of research efforts fromwhich discoveries come in the building of clinicaldepartments to greater strength than they haveever had, as in Psychiatry, and in strong initiatives to augment the outstanding work in suchareas as Surgery.During this review I have had occasion toquote frequently not only from the report of thedivisional committee on the Organization of theBasic Biological Sciences? but also from the reports of the Committee on the Problems andScope of Graduate Work, of the Committee onTeaching, and of the Committee on the Criteriaof Academic Appointment. These committees,themselves, reflect the self-critical, introspective,yet proudful tradition of our institution. Thereare 16 such all-University faculty committeeswhich have either completed their work for apreliminary essay or are now writing an essay onthe major problems which a university of ourparticular kind should reflect upon. Three of thecommittee reports have been published as of thisdate; the two I have mentioned and that of theCommittee on Criteria of Academic Appointment. Seven more of these reports will be published in the next month. When completed, thesereports will be a further step in the effort of theUniversity to understand itself and its role, thechoice of alternatives which it must make, theconditions which it must take into account inmaking its choices. There is an important sensein which these reports are not intended to bedefinitive; rather they are part of an ongoingprocess of an institution which sees itself ashaving a special unity, and takes seriously theresponsibility which this unity imposes.The ChoiceThe life of an academic institution during thelast decade has been filled with enormous dis-46traction. The pressures have been heavy not onlyon administrative officers, but on a very largesegment of the faculty. To a considerable extent the support of research has been nationallystructured, and increasingly in such a way as toreduce the flexibility of the institution whileplacing an enormous burden upon the scholar.Education as a whole has been looked on as onegiant system to which preformulated problemscould be given for solution, or as a collection ofgeographic places housing separate disciplines,part of a common market, or with the individual faculty member as a necessary entrepreneur. Thevery idea of a university having a special valuebecause of its unity, with an inner direction andjudgment as to its course, has been downgraded or abandoned. But we have not acceptedthis view. We have welcomed this as a time torethink, to be about the business of improvingwhat we do, and to plan ahead. This is what Ibelieve the academic community and the friendsof the University have expected of us. The truthis that in view of the University's history, noother choice was possible.47THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO RECORDOFFICE OF THE VICE PRESIDENT FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRSRoom 200, Administration Building-,J % %}Jf *f" ^. c3k. 1~ :3 HM<oTloItS>ognooE2.l-***£o z"0 X om S c ?u o 5S > ¦o* oH O >s gz 1.O r-r- — CO3S2 z o N-t o m*». — OCO 3