(FORTUNE Magazine) – In a speech to the Association of Community College Trustees, Senator Robert C. Byrd, the West Virginia Democrat who heads the Senate Appropriations Committee, said four-year institutions were . . . forgetting that their role is to . . . help the United States compete economically . . . Mr. Byrd criticized . . . a University of Illinois course on billiards and a sociology course offered in 1989 at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, which studied the followers of the . . . Grateful Dead. The Senator said . . . that his feelings would not affect his support for Pell Grants and other federal higher-education programs. -- From an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education.