M.I.T. President Appeals for Unity Of Teaching and Research Program

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has come to the crossing of a "historic threshold" which will involve "changes in intellectual outlook, in basic academic policies, and in our range of interests," M.I.T. president Julius A. Stratton said in his report for the year 1963. The report, now available in paperback, will be officially published with all of the Institutes' reports this week.

As a result of its accelerating development, Stratton said, M.I.T, faces serious problems. These include the growth of research as compared to teaching, the loosening of institutional ties within the university, the need for a more imaginitive curriculum, and the increasing demands made on M.I.T. faculty members by outside projects.

According to Stratton, "the great changes that have come to M.I.T. within the past decade stem from the phenomenal development of science and engineering."

Research Passes Teaching

In the past year, Stratton said, expenditures for research surpassed expenditures for education for the first time since 1954, and research expenditures are now rising faster than educational expenditures.

But Stratton insisted that" the commitment to teach is by no means necessarily in conflict with a commitment to research, Indeed, the special quality that should distinguish the modern scientific university and set it apart from the laboratories of industry and research institutes is a total involvement in both the teaching and learning process."

Unfortunately, he continued, the rapid expansion of M.I.T. has let to a feeling of "isolation or personal separation" among both students and faculty, and a principal factor in this "weakening of institutional ties" has been the emphasis on research.

Stratton listed the recommendations of another faculty committee investigating the curriculum. Among the steps this committee suggested were checks on "excessive preoccupation with grades."

The curriculum committee also recommended that lab courses have 'project" rather than "exercise" emphasis so that the laboratory would become "a means by which the student may learn the essential nature of the experimental approach."