EDUCATION WATCH : Back to School

As much as anything, it was a yacht--donated to Stanford University and somehow counted as part of the school’s overhead on government research contracts--that caused Donald Kennedy to resign as its president.

That said, it is fitting that Kennedy faced up to one of the oldest seafaring traditions: Captains are responsible for mistakes, no matter who is on watch. And it is fair for him to point out that the root problem was bad bookkeeping.

A bit more complicated and potentially even more admirable is the new meaning he gives to another sailing tradition: The captain goes down with the ship. Kennedy will go down without the ship, and that could be as big a contribution as the many positive things he did as one of the best presidents Stanford ever had.

In the race for shrinking research funds and exploding financial rewards for scientists who get there first, there will always be a temptation for researchers, or their institutions, to take short cuts. Next year, Kennedy will return to what he was doing when named president--teaching biology at Stanford, specializing in environmental protection and planning, a field in which he helped make Stanford a national leader.

He will be a visible reminder of the importance of keeping books straight and of ethics on campus. But we shouldn’t overlook his accomplishments, which are large and various, accomplishments such as raising Stanford’s endowment or pressing the faculty to emphasize teaching rather than research. Those contributions will be remembered and rewarded by history as the ship sails on.