From Goheen to "Boheen"

At some U.S. colleges in recent years, the quest for a new president has been an acrimonious affair, with students, faculty and alumni all vying for a major voice in the selection process. But when Princeton's Robert F. Goheen announced last March that he intended to step down after 15 years as president, there was no unseemly power struggle at the nation's fourth oldest university, either onstage or behind the scenes. As one senior wrote in the alumni magazine: "Students trust the administration to come up with a qualified appointee."

A major reason for the lack of acrimony was the presence on campus of William Gordon Bowen, 38, university provost and Princeton's No. 2 man since 1967. A nationally known economist with an excellent record as an academic administrator, Bowen was heartily recommended by student, faculty and staff search committees. Thus it was no surprise last week when the trustees agreed, and appointed him the 17th president in Princeton's history.

As provost, Bowen has been the chief ax wielder during a period of severe financial crisis at the school. He used his expertise on the economics of higher education to help trim back a projected $5,500,000 deficit for the current school year to a more manageable $900,000 loss. Bowen managed to maintain a reputation for accessibility and for fair-minded analysis even among those at the university who were hurt by the cuts. In the economy drive, athletics funds were trimmed and the entire graduate program in Slavic studies is being phased out to avoid weakening other disciplines by major across-the-board cutbacks. Reasoned Bowen: "It's better to do a smaller number of things well." Scholars in other graduate programs, their budgets nearly intact, readily agreed.

The son of an Ohio business machine salesman, Bowen went through Denison University on scholarship and was the first member of his family to graduate from college. He did his graduate work in economics at Princeton on scholarship, and in 1965, at 31, became the second-youngest full professor in the school's modern history. As an economist, he has specialized in studies of concrete, practical concerns; his best-known book is an analysis of the financial problems of the performing arts in the U.S. Youthful enough to pass for a junior instructor, Bowen, who is married and has a son, 13, and a daughter, 7, keeps in trim by playing tennis (he was twice a college-conference singles champion as an undergraduate) and by frequently biking to his office.

Bowen was deeply involved in the planning of a recent Princetonian innovation--the admission of coeds. He is also an ex officio member of Princeton's Commission on the Future of the College, which has proposed that undergraduates be allowed to take their degree in three years instead of four. Closely tied to the policies of his predecessor (students once nicknamed him "Boheen"), he nonetheless has no intention of radically changing the university's assured and even ways. Bowen's most immediate problem, in fact, is ridding himself of his Scrooge image. "As pressing as economic issues really are, they're not the most important ones for me now," he said last week. "Educational issues are."

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