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\'3;↓Q\CSTANFORD UNIVERSITY
\F3\CSTANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305
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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE LABORATORY\←L\-R\/'7;\+R\→.\→S   Telephone:
COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT\←S\→.415-497-4430
\F0\C23 January 1975




To the editor of the Stanford Daily:

\J	Here are some observations of the Faculty Senate meeting of 23 January
1975 and an interpretation of what they mean for the future of Stanford.  The
subject of the meeting was Stanford's financial situation and what to do
about it.  The meeting opened with a statement from President Lyman
that difficult financial situations tended to have divisive effects and
that unity (of the Stanford community) was needed to deal with them.  No-one
disputed this.

	The specific agenda item was a resolution by Professor Pittendrigh
that had been presented a week earlier and
to the general effect that the Faculty Senate should concern itself with
the distribution of budget readjustments.  The  third paragraph of the resolution
was:

\F1"It is the sense of the Senate that, in general, the University's effectiveness
in discharging its primary functions now, and its resilience to face further
challenge, will be less threatened by a reduction in the generous support
services in now enjoys than by any fiscally comparable economy achieved by
curtailment of the academic program itself."\F0

	In the discussion, Professor Pittendrigh expressed some regret that
some people had interpreted the resolution as expressing a lack of confidence
in the Stanford Administration.  The resolution was interpreted by various
people as possibly casting unfair aspersions on the Staff and Administration
and it was voted to strike the above paragraph.
At this point I left, and I don't know what happened subsequently.

	The factual background of Professor Pittendrigh's resolution includes
the fact that the current expenditure on administrative salaries out of
general funds is $21 million per year and the current expenditure on faculty
salaries is $15 million, and these numbers were recently expected to increase
to $31 million and $21 million respectively.  Since the early 1960s, administrative
expenditures have grown four times as fast as strictly academic expenditures
and the above projection still has administrative salary expenditures
increasing faster than academic.

	There are two ways one can look at an institution like a university
(two \F1models\F0 of institutions to use social science language).  The first
is as a community including various groups (in this case faculty, students,
and staff) with varying interests, and that policy is best that most
effectively advances the interests of these diverse groups.  In times of
crisis, the most important consideration is to maintain the unity of these
groups so that they can most effectively advance their common interests.
In accordance with this model, President Lyman's call for unity was most
appropriate, and accordingly the Senate was entirely correct in voting down
Professor Pittendrigh's paragraph as potentially divisive.

	The second model of an institution is that it is created and maintained
by society for a purpose - in the case of a university, the advancement and
propagation of knowledge - and the emphasis given to its various activities
should be determined so as to best advance this purpose.  From this point of
view, Professor Pittendrigh's paragraph was appropriate if true.  However, its
truth was not debated, only whether it was divisive, so we must conclude that
the Senate majority takes for now the first view of Stanford as an institution.

	The founders of universities typically take the second view.  That is
why universities are governed by boards of trustees rather than by democratically
elected bodies.
The trustees, who do not receive money from the institution and are not
part of the community, are supposed to make sure that the institution
acts in accordance with its purposes even when
the interests of the groups that compose it suggest a different policy.

	Recently many institutions have become uncertain about their purposes
and have therefore tended more to the community model, Stanford among them
as evidenced by President Lyman's speech.  In so far as this is so, the following
considerations apply: Stanford depends substantially on donations, and the
donors prefer to imagine that their donations advance some purpose, so
at least lip service to this idea should be given.  The Community should
view tolerantly the basically harmless
personal commitment of many of its members to advancing
and propagating knowledge in so far as their numbers warrant the expenditure
of Community resources, and these members don't ask the Community
to do anything contrary to the welfare of other members.
However, today some young professors who have been members of the Community
for as long as six years, have to find other jobs just because they
haven't advanced knowledge enough to meet
some arbitrary requirement; this is clearly harmful to their welfare and
consequently subversive of the unity of the Community.
Perhaps the Community should liquidate the University
if it is too hard to get enough continued external support.  Note that
if the $300 million being raised by the Campaign for Stanford were divided
into three equal parts for students, staff and faculty, each student would get about
$10,000, each staff member about $20,000 and each faculty member about
$100,000 not even counting what the Campus would fetch.  I am sure my share
would tide me over until I got a job in another university, and the vacation
would be relaxing.

	If we adopt the purpose model of Stanford, and I do, then
Professor Pittendrigh's motion put the case for reducing administration
and services rather too mildly.
A good general goal is the ratio of service to academic personnel
expense that existed in 1960 supplemented by comparing service functions
with the personnel employed in them at the more economical other institutions.
Different institutions make the transition to over-administration at different
times;  Berkeley did it long before Stanford, and for a long time, the difference
was one of Stanford's major recruiting points.  Probably some universities still
haven't, but I know of no institution having reversed it except under the
threat of death and usually not even then.

	The Stanford Administration is certainly making some effort to reduce
its expenses, though maybe they absorb the people displaced in the
reduction in one component by expanding another.
However, it won't be easy the President and Provost to dismantle any of the
offices they have created. They won't get the assistance they need in this task
with a slogan of "unity", and it appears from today's meeting
that they won't get it from the community-minded Faculty Senate.  Maybe they
will get it from the Trustees, since that is what the Trustees are for.
They may need the kind of assistance I heard about on a jury once
in a drunk driving case when a
policeman said, "We assisted Mr. X into the patrol car."\.


	
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John McCarthy
Computer Science Department
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