Report Card: Report Card

¶Columbia University announced that it was setting up an ambitious Council for Atomic Age Studies that would cut across all fields of learning and involve the entire university. Purpose of the council: to study not only the scientific aspects of atomic energy but also its effect on “such diverse areas” as industry, law, economics, foreign policy, agriculture, city planning and community life.

¶For the third time since World War II, Yale University was forced to boost overall undergraduate fees to help meet its soaring expenses. Henceforth, the resident student’s fees that amounted to $1,000 in 1941 will add up to $2,000. ¶The Council for Financial Aid to Education reported that corporate gifts to U.S. colleges and universities had hit the $100 million mark in 1956—an increase of $60 million over 1950. But while total private voluntary gifts exceeded $500 million, said the council’s President Wilson Compton, the nation’s campuses would still need twice that amount “if they are to meet rock-bottom requirements of maintenance and growth.” ¶Resignation of the week: Fred D. Fagg Jr., 60, as president of the University of Southern California. In his ten years at U.S.C., Fagg saw his enrollment nearly triple to 17,500, his campus grow by ten major new buildings, and the university give out almost as many diplomas (nearly 35,000) as it had in all its previous 66 years. Reason for his resignation: ill health.