On Dollars and the Behavioral Sciences
T HE planners for university development can learn something from the response of a comely woman student when interviewed for a study of occupational choice. "What do you expect to be doing ten years from now? " asked the researcher. "I'll be married and have a couple of children," was her confident reply. "How can you predict the future ?" the interviewer inquired. " Do you have a steady boy friend?" "Not yet, but I know what I want, and from then on the future is only a matter of probability." No faculty, no president, and no board of trustees can predict the future of their university with certainty, but they can plan purposefully. They can greatly increase the probability that future development will take place within the range of what is desired. Such long-range planning is particularly urgent in the behavioral sciences. This fact was recognized by the Ford Foundation, which in I953 granted funds to five universities, Chicago, Harvard, Michigan, North Carolina, and Stanford, to review the development of this field of knowledge in their institutions. The " behavioral sciences " is a relatively new label. The Ford Foundation adopted it to describe the activities of their recently created division for the scientific study of human behavior. Psychology, sociology and anthropology, economics, and political science are near the center of this field of inquiry, but as we move to the periphery, no sharp boundaries can be drawn. There are common frontiers with biology and medicine, with the physical sciences and mathematics, and with the humanities. The concept of behavioral sciences is not a faddish substitute of a new term for others that are familiar and with which we feel comfortable. Its emergence is symptomatic of the recognition that the study of man cannot be done well within the limits of any of the traditionally defined social-science fields. A multidisciplinary approach and terminology are the result. In many universities the scientific study of man is not much above a minimum subsistence level. Even at the University of Chicago, which has given special attention to this field of knowledge, a faculty self-study committee reported: