Research Universities are Key, But Graduates Need Job Skills
Photo by Bryan Jones
America’s economic dominance has been driven in large part by the countless scientific and commercial breakthroughs that have sprung from our research universities. The extraordinary return on investment provided by our research universities is one of the reasons that American higher education is widely considered to be the best in the world and why other countries are aggressively seeking to replicate the American research university model.
The transfer of new technology from university laboratories to the private sector has a long history and has taken many different forms. The current national emphasis on this activity, however, can be dated to the 1980 enactment of The Patent and Trademark Law Amendments Act, more commonly known as the Bayh-Dole Act.
Although a handful of American universities were moving science from the laboratory to industrial commercialization as early as the 1920s, academic technology transfer as a formal concept originated in a report entitled “Science – The Endless Frontier” that Vannevar Bush wrote for the President in 1945. It stimulated the formation of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Office of Naval Research (ONR).
In the 1960s and 1970s, there was much study and debate surrounding federal patent policies. A major concern was the lack of success by the federal government in promoting the adoption of new technologies by industry. There was no government-wide policy regarding ownership of inventions made by government contractors and grantees under federal funding. NASA and the Defense Department had opposite policies regarding ownership of scientific developments. In 1980, the federal government held title to approximately 28,000 patents. Fewer than 5% of these were licensed to industry for development of commercial products.
In 1980 the new policy permitted exclusive licensing when combined with diligent development and transfer of an invention to the marketplace for the public good. Universities immediately began to develop and strengthen the internal expertise needed to effectively engage in the patenting and licensing of inventions. In many cases, institutions that had not been active in this area began to establish entirely new technology transfer offices, building teams with legal, business, and scientific backgrounds.
University research is a vital building block of the nation’s R&D enterprise. Universities performed 56 percent of the nation’s basic research in 2008, or about $39 billion of the national total of $69 billion. For applied research, universities performed 12 percent of the nation’s total in 2008, or about $11 billion of the national total of $89 billion.
Universities receive research funding from many sources, including state and local governments, companies, and nonprofit organizations. By far the largest supporter of university research is the federal government. In 2009, the federal government provided $33 billion, or about 60 percent, of the $55 billion spent by universities on R&D. The next largest source was universities’ own funding at $11 billion, or 20 percent, followed by other nonprofit organizations at $4.3 billion, or eight percent.
There is an important issue regarding the research university’s lack of focus and interest in preparing graduates for the workforce. The issue is the nature of graduate education itself. Research universities may not agree that they have a dual duty: to equip graduate students for the jobs in the workforce, while at the same time not sacrificing the quality of their exposure to basic research. The reality is that research universities tend to not be involved in developing professional degrees in science with the goal of serving workforce needs.
There is also a question regarding the ability of the 60 research universities in America competing with the increasing number of emerging research universities in developed and developing nations. A sharper focus, with a concentration of specializations in research may be the future. University system of Maryland Chancellor Bret Kirwin commented on this trend in a speech in 2010:
I also believe we will see fewer research universities in the U.S. by 2020, and a narrower portfolio of research activities at our major research universities. While there may be a few exceptions, I don’t believe universities will be able to aspire to excellence across the board in research. The funds simply won’t be there to maintain competitive research programs in a wide swath of areas when the competition isn’t just 50 or 60 other U.S. universities, but three or four times that number spread around the globe.
