 These activities affected MIT profoundly . A 1949 report noted the lack of " any great slackening in the pace of life at the Institute " to match the return to peacetime , remembering the " academic tranquility of the prewar years " , though acknowledging the significant contributions of military research to the increased emphasis on graduate education and rapid growth of personnel and facilities . The faculty doubled and the graduate student body quintupled during the terms of Karl Taylor Compton , president of MIT between 1930 and 1948 ; James Rhyne Killian , president from 1948 to 1957 ; and Julius Adams Stratton , chancellor from 1952 to 1957 , whose institution @-@ building strategies shaped the expanding university . By the 1950s , MIT no longer simply benefited the industries with which it had worked for three decades , and it had developed closer working relationships with new patrons , philanthropic foundations and the federal government . 
