The Ford Foundation has granted Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology $3 million each to endow new professorships in urban studies and to establish an M.I.T. interdepartmental laboratory for urban systems research.

The grant to Harvard will endow fives new chairs in six possible area of the University: the Design School, the School of Education, the Law School, the Department of Social Relations, the Department of Economics, and the Division of Engineering and Applied Physics. The first five areas are likely to receive the urban chairs, President Pusey said yesterday at a press conference with M.I.T. president Howard W. Johnson and Daniel P. Moynihan, Director of the Joint Center for Urban Studies.

The grant to M.I.T. will endow three new chairs and allow scholars from various disciplines to apply scientific and technologies methods of analysis to urban problems within a new M.I.T. Urban Systems Laboratory.

Joint Center

Ford will also double the research funds available to the Joint Center over the next three years. The Joint Center, which was established by Harvard and M.I.T. in 1950 with the help of Ford money, received a seven-year grant in 1966 of $1.4 million. The terms of this grant will be revised so that the Joint Center can expend it all by 1970 instead of by 1973. This change will raise the rate of expenditure of the Ford money for the next three academic years to $400,000 per year, rather than $200,000 per year. All other grants and contractual research at the Center amount to about $400,000.

The Ford grants to Harvard and M.I.T. yesterday were part of a $10.8 million foundation program that established 14 new professorships at four universities. Columbia University received $1.8 million from Ford to endow three chairs in urban studies; the University of Chicago received $3 million to endow three chairs and to establish several action programs.

Shift Towards Endowment

During the past year, Ford has directed $24 million at the problems of cities. The important significance of yesterday's $10.8 million grants, like Ford's grants in international studies in 1960 and 1965, is their unusual emphasis on financing professorships.

In the past, most private foundations have been reluctant to endow chairs and have preferred to give research money and then left universities gain their own capital. But Ford has apparently come to the conclusion that endowment grants are necessary to build up a field of interest.

McGeorge Bundy, president of the Ford Foundation, said in a joint statement with the four university presidents that "mores first-rate scholars and scientists need to attack these urban problems in systematic and fundamental ways, and to enlist and train larger numbers of talented young people who can multiply their efforts."

The statement continued, "Until now there have been too few organized efforts to accord sustained teaching and research on these problems the institutional standing and commitment which befit their importance, and which are required to attract and hold the best minds. We see the programs announced today as a first large step in that direction."

Professorship Necessary

Harvard officials feel that professorships are necessary to attract first-rate people in urban studies, and that these people are essential for long-term work and for attracting research money. Pusey said yesterday. "It is important to recognize the board problems involved and the need for continuity in research. New professorships are a more primary way to develop studies in a field than are short-term research grants."

Don K. Price, Dean of the Kennedy School of Government, thinks the new permanent appointments "fit well into the Harvard incentive system" and should result in more Ph.D. candidates, new undergraduate courses, and fuller research.

James Q. Wilson, professor of Government and former director of the Joint Center, said Tuesday that "the new professorships will sustain our short-term research efforts, give them continuity, and relate more closely to action programs. Able people are scarce in this field; the Center has brought some, and this grant should attract more."