Standard & Goal

With characteristic bluntness, the University of Pittsburgh's hard-driving Chancellor Edward H. Litchfield two years ago assessed his school's teaching, found it "not as good as it should be. In fact, some of it is poor." Since then, Pitt's faculty has been strengthened, and its salaries have been raised. Last week Chancellor Litchfield announced a gift that should do much to realize the university's aim of excellence: $12 million, the great bulk of it to be spent for teaching and graduate study, presented by the A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust. Breakdown of the huge grant:

P: $5,500,000 for six endowed professorships in the humanities, two in the natural sciences and two in the social sciences.

P: $6,150,000 for 50 pre-doctoral and six to nine post-doctoral fellowships in the humanities, natural and social sciences.

P: $350,000 for the University of Pittsburgh's new College of the Academic Disciplines, which will help coordinate the efforts of Pitt's various schools and departments. Said Financier Paul Mellon,* Yaleman ('29) and chairman of the trust: "This grant is made with the understanding that the salaries paid to the Andrew Mellon professors will be such as to attract eminent men capable of distinguished scholarship . . . and will be commensurate with or superior to the best salaries paid in like fields in any other American university [best guess: $20,000 or more]. It is hoped that this nucleus of distinguished scholars and students may set a standard and a goal."

*Whose Old Dominion Foundation last spring gave Yale $15 million (TIME, June 16).

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