The American Council on Education today concludes its two-day annual meeting in Chicago after releasing a report on the costs of higher education prepared in part by President Pusey.

A statement by the Problems and Policies Committee, headed by Pusey, calls for Americans to devote more of their income to higher education. "The price of educational adequacy," the report said, "[must be] looked upon, not as a cost, but as an investment that promises rich returns and is indeed indispensable to a free and explosively developing society."

"At a time when knowledge has multiplied many fold, the birth rate doubled, and the domestic and world situation become even more complex and precarious, we urgently need to establish a higher priority rating for expenditures to improve and enlarge the range of higher education."

The statement by Pusey and 13 other heads of academic institutions called for a major advance from present levels of financial support for the colleges "to those already evident in such areas as military defense and highway development."

The educators, however, also called for greater efficiency and economy by the colleges themselves. "A great waste in higher education," they said, "comes from the unnecessary duplication of programs, both among and within institutions. . . . State-wide planning for the efficient allocation of educational responsibilities needs to become far more general."