Education: Report Card

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¶At a meeting in honor of Robert Gordon Sproul's 25th year as president of the University of California, his second in command at Berkeley, Chancellor Clark Kerr, announced some cheery, silver-anniversary news. A wealthy banker, who insisted on remaining anonymous, has bequeathed the university $2,750,000 to start an Institute for Basic Research in Science with much the same sort of ideals as those of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Its main purpose: "to discover and encourage the work of individuals of great talent and promise."

¶Alarmed by the fact that U.S. colleges seem to be turning out only about half as many high school science and mathematics teachers as they did in 1950, Shell Oil Co. announced that it was starting a program called the "Shell Merit Fellowships for High School Science and Mathematics Teachers." Each year 60 talented teachers will be packed off, all expenses paid, for summer seminars at Cornell or Stanford. To make up for lost summer earnings, Shell is also shelling out a cash bonus: $500 for each fellow.