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.

Over-reliance on strictly economic justifications has already begun to hurt the quality and range of education at every level of American life.

On the other hand, it is not fair to say that changes in federal policy have caused our tuition to rise faster. Every economic argument imaginable would indicate that we should raise tuition at a faster rate than we do.

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.

We have been restraining the growth of the cost of education-that is, tuition, room and board-to be within approximately one and a half percentage points of the consumer price index.

I believe that our office has clearly been the leader in building coalitions, in getting other universities across the contrary to interact more effectively with the government and particularly the Congress.