Goodbye, Academe

Many college presidents are one part educator and three parts corporate executive--and in his 17 years as president of the University of Delaware, Dr. John A. Perkins, 52, has combined the duties well. Delaware had 4,000 students at all levels when he came; today it has 11,000. Perkins increased the university's physical plant from $15 million worth of buildings to $66 million, increased the library's book collection from 155,000 volumes to half a million, quintupled research funds, lured more faculty members with doctorates and found time to spur on a winning football team.

Such corporate ability is bound to attract attention outside academe. Last week Perkins submitted his resignation to Delaware's board of trustees, announced that in September he will become president of Dun & Bradstreet, Inc., where he will serve under Chairman and Chief Executive J. Wilson Newman.

Perkins will find Dun & Bradstreet as complicated as a multiversity. The mainstay of the 126-year-old firm is still its credit-reporting service, whose 80,000 subscribers can get a rating on any of 3,000,000 firms. Dun & Bradstreet also publishes magazines, including Dun's Review, turns out Moody investors' manuals, is involved in plant-location studies through its recent acquisition of the Fantus Co. The Reuben H. Donnelley Corp., another subsidiary, puts out such bibles as telephone books and the Official Airline Guide. The parent company also operates a mutual fund, Moody's Fund, Inc., will open up a second this week known as Moody's Capital Fund. Altogether, Dun & Bradstreet's gross income last year was $210 million, which is a lot more than most university presidents get to handle.

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