Papers Commissioned as Inputs to Annual Science and Technology Report (ASTR) (2nd). Volume VII. Government-University Relationships: The Conduct of Research and Development

摘要

If scientific research on its present scale is to go on, it cannot do so without a large amount of money from the federal government. The universities could not pay the salaries of the scientists, they could not pay for their equipment and staff without the money from the federal government even though the federal government does not pay all the costs of the research which has come to be financially dependent on it. The federal government in its turn cannot in the foreseeable future dispense with academic scientists as long as it believes that it needs, now and in the future, to draw on newly discovered scientific knowledge to perform its tasks, and as long as it believes that scientists in the universities can make those discoveries. Thus the relationship between the federal government and the universities contained of the federal support of academic scientific research, things being what they are in the United States, is an indissoluble one. Yet the relationship is, as so many observers say, troubled.