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I began this article with the thesis that the director of a university computer center is in a double bind. He is under increasing pressure because of competition with networks and minicomputers at the same time that his funding base is weakening. The breadth of demand for computer services, and the cost of developing new services, are increasing dramatically. The director is pressed by budget officers and internal economics to run more efficiently, but if in so doing he fails to meet new needs or downgrades effectiveness for some existing users he runs the risks of losing demand to the competition and hence worsening his immediate financial problems. The impact of networks on this state of affairs might be, briefly, as follows: 1) The centrally planned computer utility would take these pressures off the individual campus computer center and lodge them in a state, regional, or perhaps even a national network organization. While this might be desirable in some cases (depending on the scale of operations), I believe that economies of scale would tend to be more than offset by diseconomies in planning, management, and control; by a reduction of responsiveness to users' needs; and by a slowing of the rate of innovation in computing. 2) The distributive network substitutes a "market economy" for a centrally planned one. Subject to a certain amount of planning and regulation, which might be undertaken by colleges and universities themselves, individual researchers can tap larger markets for services, and participating institutions can obtain at least part of their computing needs on a variable cost basis at prices determined by competition. 3) Membership in a distributive network with sufficient breadth and depth of resources can emancipate the director of the computer center by widening options and allowing him to serve more effectively the steadily broadening range of legitimate academic and research computing needs without his having to stretch his internal resources too thinly. In other words, he can solve the problem of simultaneously improving the breadth of service and increasing operating efficiency. 4) Involvement in distributive networking will raise a new kind of question for the senior officers of colleges and universities. This is the decision concerning the development of computer services for export to users at other institutions. The effect on the university's own academic program (in the sense of its becoming a "center of excellence" in a particular computerrelated discipline), the risks involved in trying to attract outside users on the network, and the consequent responsibility for providing continuity of service at the peril of suffering in national academic reputation will be key considerations. The worth of, and probably the demand for, such services will be a function of the excellence of the development work, and this in turn will depend on its involvement with the university's academic resources. The "computer services export" question is fundamentally academic, as are decisions on the expansion or contraction of teaching and research programs, and it must be dealt with in the same terms. The next few years will be crucial ones for colleges and universities generally, and for their computing resources in particular. The advent of computer networking raises a host of academic, economic, technological, and organizational problems. In spite of these problems, I believe that distributive networking will have a significant and positive effect on campus computing services.

The author explores the subject of capital needs in university biomedical research. Three main topics are covered: the universities' need for capital (which is great and growing fast); the sources of capital for universities (private donations, state and federal governments, institutional funds, and debt); and a review of federal policy, to determine whether the federal government is part of the problem of meeting universities' capital needs or part of the solution. For each topic, important assumptions, questions, and possible future trends and dangers are reviewed. The author calls for the university research community to face the difficult issues he has raised and consolidate their thinking in order to avoid potential dangers and to ensure the health of university science into the 21st century.

The most basic conclusion coming out of the EDUCOM seminars is that computer networking must be acknowledged as an important new mode for obtaining information and computation (15). It is a real alternative that needs to be given serious attention in current planning and decision-making. Yet the fact is that many institutions are not taking account of networks when they confer on whether or how to replace their main computer. Articulation of the possibilities of computer networks goes back to the early 1960's and before, and working networks have been in evidence for several years now, both commercially and in universities. What is new, however, is the unmistakable recognition-bordering on a sense of the inevitable-that networks are finally practical and here to stay. The visionary and promotional phases of computer networks are over. It is time for hard-nosed comparative analysis (16). Another conclusion of the seminars has to do with the factors that hinder the fuller development of networking. The major problems to be overcome in applying networks to research and education are political, organizational, and economic in nature rather than technological. This is not to say that the hardware and software problems of linking computers and information systems are completely solved, but they are not the big bottlenecks at present. Research and educational institutions must find ways to organize themselves as well as their computers to work together for greater resource sharing. The coming of age of networks takes on special significance as a result of widespread dissatisfactions expressed with the present computing situation. There is a feeling that the current mode of autonomous, self-sufficient operation in the provision of computing and information services is frequently wasteful, deficient, and unresponsive to users' needs because of duplication of effort from one installation to another, incompatibilities, and inadequate documentation, program support, and user assistance. Complaints about the relative lack of uniform standards and the paucity of information on what programs and data are available and how to get and use them are commonplace. The human tendency, when beset by problems such as these, is to seek a savior in the next new technology-networks in this case. But networking does not in and of itself offer a solution to current deficiencies. What it does offer is a promising vehicle with which to bring about important changes in user practices, institutional procedures, and government policy that can lead to effective solutions. Thus more critical than whether networking is developed and applied is how it is developed and applied. For example, networking emphasizes the need for standards and good documentation. Unless effective mechanisms are developed and strong measures taken in networking to ensure that suitable standards and documentation are developed, present inadequacies could get worse, not better.