For the first time in six years. Radcliffe earlier this month sold $3 million worth of bonds to finance the relocation of one of the country's foremost women's scholarship programs.

The Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute, one of the nation's four largest post-doctoral fellowship programs, will move next fall into the largest of four buildings bought last November from Lesley College

This month's bond sale will pay for the $1.4 million purchase (which included four abandoned schoolhouse buildings and an empty lot) and the estimated $1.1 million renovation of the Bunting Institute's new house. Radcliffe Financial Vice President Louis R. Morrell said yesterday

Radcliffe proposed last fall to move the institute to the Concord Ave, location because both the Bunting Institute and and the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library--where it is currently housed--are expanding so rapidly that they cannot remain together in the five story building

Radcliffe issued the tax exempt bonds through the Massachusetts Health and Education Facilities Authority, which allows educational institutions to sell bonds at a below market interest rate as long as they use the money for educational purposes

The bond issue was originally purchased in entirety by the New York brokerage firm of Salomon Brothers. The Cambridge brokerage firm of Moseley, Hallgarten, Estabrook and Weedon bought a large chuck of the issue from Solomon Brothers, and as of late yesterday afternoon had about 320 of the bonds left for sale, according to Moseley broker Peter S. Scholl

The Radcliffe bonds were selling for $963 apiece yesterday and pay roughly 9 percent interest. Interest income on the bonds is not taxable.

Bond sales are a popular means through which corporations raise money from public and private investors to finance projects not provided for in their yearly budgets Bond holders earn yearly interest on their investment for a certain number of years before cashing in the bonds Radcliffe's last bond sale was for $2.5 million in 1979.

Harvard currently has some $640 million in debt outstanding in the form of bond issues, which have gone to pay for numerous renovation projects around campus and the $350-million Harvard-built Medical Area Total Energy Plant (MATEP) in Boston, which has run about 500 percent over budget.