April 18, 1986

Like many other private universities faced with dwindling enrollments, Adelphi Univeristy acknowledges that it has serious financial problems. But on the eve of his inauguration, its seventh president, Dr. Peter Diamandopolous, said he is more concerned about what he sees as serious shortcomings in the liberal arts. His strategy to fix that, he said, is to strengthen Adelphi as a liberal arts college by reducing its enrollment of 14,000 students and by linking its professional schools more closely to the undergraduate studies. In recent years, Adelphi has grown because of its professional schools, part-time students and vocational courses for adults. But now, said Dr. Diamandopolous, who will be inaugurated today, it needs to restore ''the primacy of the arts and sciences in all the higher education programs that we offer.''

The Pentagon said today that almost a third of the Air Force F-111F fighter bombers sent on the raid against Libya aborted their missions and did not carry out their planned attacks. Despite these problems, Robert B. Sims, the Defense Department spokesman, said: ''This was a near-flawless professional operation under extremely difficult circumstances. I don't think there's been anything like it in U.S. military annals.'' Earlier, Mr. Sims had referred to the raid as ''absolutely flawless.''

The Economy The economy grew at an annual rate of 3.2 percent in the first quarter, a figure that was higher than many analysts had expected. Economists, noting the weakness shown by other indicators such as industrial output, said the G.N.P. figure should not be interpreted as a sign of a robust economy. [ Page A1. ] An expansion of the authority to issue tax-exempt bonds was approved by the Senate Finance Committee. President Reagan and House tax writers had sought restrictions on such bonds. [ D1. ]

State investigators said yesterday that they had evidence linking the city's former Taxi Commission chairman, Jay L. Turoff, to a $30,000 bribe from a company that was given a ''virtual monopoly'' in 1984 to sell a new type of taxi meter required by the commission. The purported bribery was disclosed during questioning at a hearing of the State Commission of Investigation in which two witnesses were asked whether a $30,000 bribe was paid to influence Mr. Turoff. Both witnesses, who the Investigation Commission said had financial interests in the meter company, the now-defunct Electronic CompuMeter of Brooklyn, declined to testify, citing their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. Denies Payment Earlier In earlier sworn testimony at a closed session, released by the Commission after yesterday's hearing, Mr. Turoff denied taking any improper payments, and insisted he had personally ''touched base with every meter manufacturer'' in an effort to foster competition.

After years of development battles, reams of scientific papers and another round of Japanese-American competition in electronics, the era of the megabit chip - a computer memory chip capable of storing one million bits of information - has begun. Yesterday, the International Business Machines Corporation became the world's first computer manufacturer to announce that it was making use of a megabit chip, the next generation for the semiconductor industry, in a commercial product. In relying on the megabit chip in its Model 3090 mainframe computers, also known as the Sierra series, I.B.M. is packing more and more data in less and less space - thus hoping to trim further the cost of its largest computer system. Fleeting Moment of Glory For the American electronics industry, which has virtually lost the entire memory market to low-cost Japanese competitors, it was a rare, if fleeting, moment of glory.