STANFORD UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER
STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305 © (415) 321-1200

 

 

STANFORD UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
Department of Genetics

January 6, 1969

Dr. Clark Kerr

Carnegie Feuadatioa . 5
589-Fi-fth Avenue 37 Our,
New York City, New York (o12o

Dear Dr. Kerr:

I wish to express my appreciation to you and to the Carnegie Commission
on Higher Education for its recent report.

I have not yet mace a sufficiently detailed study of it to find very
much that I would substantially criticize. I believe however I might
prefer to recommend that residents, interns and other advanced students
in health areas be given at least equal weight with the M.D. aandidates
in calculating levels of support to medical schools, (Reference Page
32).

I am particularly pleased at the discrimination indicated in the figure
on Page 11 for taking care to separate funds spent in universities from
those in the large contract centers. - One might make an even closer exam-
ination of these figures but this would not be the place for it.

yrs

I am enclosing a comment that I wrote over ten years ago that may have a
familiar ring in it. I am puzzled by your emphasis on need in your pro-
posal for educational opportunity grants and particularly your relating
the cost of education supplements to that same body of students. There
are very few families indeed who could afford higher education for their
children if they were obliged to pay the actualicost of education at’
the same time that the tax system transfers the burden of funding educa-
tion for the less privileged.

I realize that some parts of my old proposal, particularly those that
stress the criterion of academic excellence may be regarded as obsolete
today. Let me then suggest that a formula that has some probably bene-
ficial by~products that may be interesting for you to explore. Instead
of a national merit examination, provide scholarships for te upper per-
centilewof academic performance in er sen high schools! @ &y2k

Sincerely yours, _

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics

JL:ih

LT. J. P. KENNEDY, JR. LABORATORIES FOR MOLECULAR MEDICINE, DEDICATED TO RESEARCH IN MENTAL RETARDATION
MOLECULAR BIOLOGY HEREDITY NEUROBIOLOGY “DEVELOPMENTAL MEDICINE