Letter from the President

SAYING IT WITH FIGURES

By Gerhard Casper

n 1947, a man who later was to become my friend, colleague and co-author published a book that, during his lifetime, went through six editions and was translated into six languages. My friend’s name was Hans Zeisel, and his book’s title was Say It with Figures ­ a play on the florists’ slogan “Say it with flowers.”

The introduction to that book stated: “The very complexity of social events requires a language of quantity.” In my annual report to the faculty on the state of the university last fall, I tried to explore some of the complexity of Stanford by saying it with figures. Here are some of the most telling of these figures.

It is tempting to look at the university’s $1.4 billion budget and its $3.6 billion endowment and conclude, as some do, that Stanford is rich. Indeed, Stanford is a thriving university. However, the figures say something more: Among the private universities with which we most compete, Stanford does more with less.

The “more” comes in Stanford’s aspiration to excellences across the widest spectrum of endeavor ­ arts, humanities and social sciences; sciences and engineering; college, graduate and professional teaching, learning and research. This is not just a subjective statement on our part. The National Research Council, in the nation’s most extensive study of Ph.D. programs, examines only programs it deems to be of legitimate quality. No university in the nation even attempts to meet that threshold in all 43 fields that the NRC studies, but Stanford comes remarkably close: We qualified, and were ranked highly, in 41 of the 43.

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