Agency by agency, we frequently have lost a bit of ground, at least to inflation-but had it not been for the efforts we've made to educate people about the importance of science, technology and advanced education, those predictions very well might have come true.

Our goal has been to more effectively promote the value of publicly-supported research at our universities, both to the Congress and to the general public.

Looking ahead, I believe that the underlying importance of higher education, of science, of technology, of research and scholarship to our quality of life, to the strength of our economy, to our security in many dimensions will continue to be the most important message.

We will work with industrial or Dept. Of Defence sponsorship as long as we keep our principals of openness firm we're proud to work with the military, and they respect that in turn.

The thing that we at MIT must understand is the amount of real damage that is being done to us in the fine structure of how research funds are expended.

The Science Coalition, which grew out of an initial concept at Harvard and at MIT, has now grown to an informal group of about 60 research universities.

I would also certainly continue to keep loan repayment interest rates as low as possible. And I would spread the financial aid a little less thinly across all income brackets.