New Pilot for Pitt

During the ten-year tenure of former Chancellor Edward H. Litchfield, the University of Pittsburgh gained stature and generated excitement before tailspinning into insolvency (TIME, July 2, 1965). Last week Pitt pinned its hopes for regaining level flight on one of the sharpest intellects in the U.S. Air Force. The university's trustees named Colonel Wesley W. Posvar, 41, founding chairman of the Air Force Academy's political science department, as new chancellor, effective June 1.

A witty, independent-minded officer with an acerbic outlook on the worst of the military's staff-stuffy ways, Posvar was born in Topeka, and raised in Cleveland, where he topped his high school class. At West Point, he racked up the best academic record since Douglas MacArthur's cadet days, became the first Air Force officer to earn a Rhodes scholarship. He holds a B.A. and M.A. in philosophy, politics and economics from Oxford and has a doctorate from Harvard in political science.

A command pilot qualified to fly 27 types of aircraft, Posvar flew four-engine C-54 transports in the Berlin airlift before taking up his teaching duties at Colorado Springs in 1957. Then 32, he was the youngest full professor ever to serve at one of the na tion's service academies. Insisting that "anything can stand the fresh air of discussion" in a military classroom, Posvar encouraged original thinking by cadets. He became head of the academy's social sciences division in 1960.

One of Posvar's Air Force specialties was the methodology of decision making, a facility that will be sharply tested at Pitt. The school's financial troubles were blamed largely on poor budget control, an overemphasis on costly graduate studies, and the failure of a tri mester system to attract summer students. Turning to Pennsylvania taxpayers for help, Pitt gained a $5,000,000 emergency appropriation in 1965, then became a "state-related" school last fall. As a result of this change in status, state support was hiked from $6,000,000 to $20 million; but Pitt also had to drop its tuition for Pennsylvania students from $1,400 to $450 a year at a loss of $10 million. Pitt announced last week that it is going to give its trimester one more try, will abandon it if enrollment does not rise this spring.

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