Physics and engineering in a free society: 3. The public

How shall the universities of our free society meet the demand for quality and quantity in the scientific training of the next generation? That question has been well denned for our consideration by Julius Stratton. In the assignment of the next two speakers to the function of representing the interest of industry and of the public, respectively, there is just the barest hint that there might be an adversity of interest here. Since I have brought this possibility out in the open, I should assure you at once of my conviction that what is good for the US is good for General Motors. Moreover, I am willing to go the distance with the former Secretary of Defense and declare that the same is true vice versa—necessarily so in the long run. But in the long run, as John Maynard Keynes once observed, we are all dead.

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