Big changes are inevitably in the offing for the university research system, under threat from a growing monster known as pressure, according to a paper just issued by Congress' Office of Technology Assessment. The study is part of an ambitious top-to-bottom assessment of basic research's economic and social environment. Its project director is sociologist Daryl Chubin. Proposal pressure is the number of research proposals submitted to an agency compared with the number actually funded. Everyone doing or funding academic research knows about it and its causes, in agonizing detail: young, promising researchers not getting funded, funds channeled according to geography rather than talent, Congress meddling with the peer review system, economic competitiveness stresses distorting the goals of basic research, and research dollars being wasted away by overhead costs. As OTA documents, the proposal pressure ratio is going up and up. OTA surveyed several agencies and reports that in the case of Nation...