00100	\\M0BDR25;\M1BDI25;\M2NGR30;\M3XMAS25;\M4NGB25;\.
00200	\F2\CARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE LABORATORY
00300	\CCOMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
00400	\CSTANFORD UNIVERSITY
00500	\CSTANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305
00600	\F0
00700	
00800	Dear Bill,
00900	
01000		I have been thinking about our conversation after the faculty
01100	meeting,  and  it  seems to me that some considerations may have been
01200	missed with regard to the non-growth of Stanford.
01300	
01400		1. Agreed that the student population has stopped growing for
01500	a  long  while and so teaching hours in the universities ought not to
01600	grow much.
01700	
01800		2. However, the number of people capable  of  doing  research
01900	work  and  interested  in  doing so will continue to grow linearly in
02000	time.
02100	
02200		3. There is probably a continued national payoff in research.
02300	The   present  administration  is  committed  to  expanding  research
02400	especially after their current budget freezing exercise is over,  and
02500	the Democrats are even more likely to do so if they get in.
02600	
02700		4.  Therefore,  the  mix  of  activity of science PhDs in the
02800	United States is likely to shift in the direction of research.
02900	
03000		5. As institutions for doing research, the universities  will
03100	continue to have all the advantages they have ever had - contact with
03200	graduate students and a more rigorous  personnel  policy  than  other
03300	research  institutions.   Here  I refer to the effort put into tenure
03400	decisions.
03500	
03600		6. Therefore, it is reasonable to  consider  the  possibility
03700	that Stanford should continue to expand more or less linearly in time
03800	in the sciences, but that its emphasis should shift in  the  research
03900	directi
04000	
04100		7.  This  can  be done on soft money with research associates
04200	and senior research associates.  It would require  giving  additional
04300	thought  to  the  position  of senior research associate - a position
04400	without  tenure  but  with  the  privilege  of  being   a   principal
04500	investigator.  Incidental, I plan to propose Dave Luckham as a senior
04600	research associate.
04700	
04800		8. To continue to expand in  research  without  expansion  in
04900	senior  people  will  lead to anomalies and distortions if it goes on
05000	for long. Namely, new areas will not be entered or will be entered in
05100	the  name  of people who are not the originators of the ideas and the
05200	driving forces of the projects.
05300	
05400		9. Another alternative is to try  to  get  into  a  financial
05500	condition  to  offer  tenure  to  senior research associates with the
05600	proviso that the criteria for giving tenure are just as stringent  as
05700	for  professorships.   I  doubt  that we would be able to maintain as
05800	rigorous a selection as is  desirable  for  senior  people  with  out
05900	requiring  a  decision  like  that  of  giving tenure, and I think no
06000	simulation will really do, because if the decision does not have long
06100	term consequences, real decisions will be postponable indefinitely.
06200	
06300		10.  Another  possibility  is  pseudo-tenure.  Namely, tenure
06400	conditional on the ability to get outside support.  If  money  really
06500	can't  be  tied  down into endowment, this may be required.  However,
06600	there should be some hard university money in  it  or  the  decisions
06700	won't be made well.
06800	
06900		11.  The  penultimate  possibility is to hire professors, but
07000	accept that they will teach a smaller fraction of their time.
07100	
07200		12. The ultimate possibility is to do nothing and hope that a
07300	suitable  climate  for research expansion will be created outside the
07400	universities.   Then  the  universities   may   become   intellectual
07500	backwaters  unable  to bring their students into contact with current
07600	research.  This will lead to the new institutions beginning  to  take
07700	students.
07800	
07900		The  major  embarassment in deciding to continue to expand in
08000	research will be to the fiction that all  fields  are  equivalent  in
08100	their  need  for  research.   The  English  professors  and  graduate
08200	students already complain  about  "publish  or  perish"  and  express
08300	disintere#t  in  the research they have to do.  The embarassment will
08400	come from not expanding  the  fields  that  cannot  attract  research
08500	support.   But making embarassing but necessary decisions is what you
08600	administrators are paid to do.
08700	
08800		I don't expect a written reply unless you feel like it.  I'll
08900	ask you what you think sometime.
09100	
09200	
09300						Sincerely yours,
09400	
09500	
09600	
09700						John McCarthy