The reply to the question: Should the corporation give financial support to the private university? lies in the answer to a much more profound set of issues. Those issues are: What precisely is the role of the university in our society? How does that role relate to the corporation: And finally, Where do corporate executives, their employees -- and the stockholders they serve -- fit into this context? Until one has looked at these questions -- and looked at them seriously and searchingly -- I don't believe one can deal wisely with the more immediate decision of simply to give or not to give to this or that particular private institution. To begin with, it has always seemed to me that the university --any university -- is, as the word itself implies, the place where a student is formally introduced to the universe. I say "introduced" because it obviously takes a whole lifetime of learning to get to know the universe on a reasonably familiar basis. And most religions assure us that it will require much more than a mere lifetime -- indeed, a whole eternal afterlife -- to achieve a fully close relationship with it. But, be that as it may, all friendly relationships have to begin with an introduction, and the university is the place where that introduction is formalized. -3-