Universities: Ideopolis for the World

Casting a magisterial eye at the whole sweep and scope of the U.S. university, California's President Clark Kerr last week spied "an institution unique in world history"—a city of intellect that is not really private and not really public, neither entirely of the world nor entirely apart from it. In delivering this year's annual Godkin Lectures at Harvard, Kerr gave this institution a new name: "the multiversity"—a cluster of sub-universities spouting ideas at a time when "knowledge has never been so central to the conduct of an entire society."

At first glance, says Kerr, the multiversity is merely "a series of individual faculty entrepreneurs held together by a common grievance over parking." Where ancient academies had a single soul, "the multiversity has several—some of them quite good, although there is much debate on which souls really deserve salvation." In form, it is a remarkable consensus of historic patterns—British-oriented undergraduate life, German-modeled graduate studies, American-style service to the state, all of it kept "as confused as possible for the preservation of the whole uneasy balance."

No More Giants. Kerr's own colossus of seven campuses and 58,600 students (soon to double) reflects the pattern. Last year the University of California had operating costs of almost $500 million, with almost another $100 million for construction. It employed more than 40,000 people, delivered 4,000 babies in its hospitals, offered 10,000 courses, taught 200,000 extension students, and ran aid and research projects in more than 50 countries. No one man can really run such an establishment, says Kerr. The day of the "giant" university president is past. Now comes the "mediator" trying to keep peace between many power centers and "the Two-and-Seventy jarring Sects confute."

What force-feeds the multiversity is federal money—the impact of Government science research that began flooding the universities in World War II. Today the U.S. pays for about 75% of all university research; since it demands the best, more than half the money goes to only six topflight universities, notably California. The result is what Kerr calls the "federal grant" university, responding more to Government needs than to its own desires. Compared with some of his fellow presidents, Kerr is unworried about this relationship, calling it "enormously productive in enlarging the pool of scientific ideas and skills."