Universities: Upping the Ante

As science has become ever more complex, teaching it has become ever more costly. Just how expensive was indicated this week by Harvard, which announced a new $48.7 million fund-raising drive to improve its undergraduate science programs. A major objective is to meet the accelerating demand for knowledge and research facilities from increasingly sophisticated science majors, who represent about one quarter of Harvard's undergraduates. "We're teaching freshmen things I didn't learn until I was a graduate student," says Nobel Physics Professor Edward Purcell. The University also wants to beef up its general-education science courses for what Dean Franklin Ford calls the "scientific illiterates,"—meaning the majority of liberal arts majors.

Although some of the money will go for new courses and endowed professorships, most will cover new facilities, including a $14.5 million science center where students will have access to sophisticated computers and research equipment and lab courses will be delivered by TV. Harvard's science drive is the largest such specialized appeal ever launched by any college, but Ford expects that many more universities will be undertaking similar programs. "We can't say we're missionaries," he says. "But we can claim to be bellwethers."

Teaching science is becoming a financial problem even for schools that specialize in it. Last week M.I.T. announced that it will need a minimum of $135 million in additional private funds within the next ten years for expansion. Cal Tech has also kicked off a fiveyear, $85.4 million campaign, with most of the money expected to go for new buildings and increased operating costs.