The National Survey of Desktop Computer Use in Higher Education was conducted in the spring and summer of 1990 by the Center for Scholarly Technology at the University of Southern California, in cooperation with EDUCOM and with support from 15 corporate sponsors. The survey was designed to collect information about campus planning, policies, and procedures affecting the use of desktop computers (i.e., personal computers and workstations) from colleges and universities in the United States including Alaska and Hawaii. Information elicited included general campus policies about desktop computing; current microcomputer and desktop computer facilities; hardware acquisition policies and procedures; software utilization issues; academic and instructional computing policies and procedures; future issues affecting campus computing; strategic planning issues; libraries and computers; networking; computing for disabled students; vendor assessment; and organization of campus computing and technology units. Questionnaires were mailed to some 2,500 campuses in May 1990; responses were received from 1,148 campuses (45.8%) by the closing date for data analysis. Data presented in this report are based on the responses from public and private research universities, public and private four-year colleges, and community colleges. (Survey results for private two-year campuses are not included because of the very small number of responses.) Survey respondents were individuals responsible for the operation and future direction of academic computing on their campuses. The report provides a narrative summary of the survey results, including the ratio of students to computers overall (46 students per machine) and also the ratios in the different types of schools; technology as an instructional resource; computing policies in the curriculum; resale activities; codes of conduct; hardware and operating systems; networking; and maintaining the infrastructure. Survey data are then presented in tabular format. Three appendices provide a description of the survey methodology; a copy of the 56-item survey instrument; and a list of participating institutions. (DB)