For the nation’s beleaguered research universities, the annual policy conference of the world’s premier science association would seem like just the place to get some much-needed advice. And for two days late last week, the American Association for the Advancement of Science gave them plenty of it.
The research universities were told to compete more. They were told to cooperate more. They were told to innovate more. They were told to change their culture.
The advice came from an array of prominent business consultants, top federal officials, and education experts. In the end, though, conference participants gave perhaps their most enthusiastic approval to a member of the audience, Steven V.W. Beckwith, vice president for research and graduate studies at the University of California system, after he reminded the experts that foreign countries are still trying hard to copy the American model.
“The universities, in fact, are doing pretty well in the United States,” Mr. Beckwith said, to a warm round of applause, after he stood to respond to AAAS panelists at a session Friday on strategies for promoting research and innovation.
Mr. Beckwith’s assurance was a reference to the general style and approach of American research universities, rather than the actual condition that many now find themselves in. As virtually everyone at the conference acknowledged, the fate of university-based research is in peril, because of a series of economic and political factors both within and beyond the control of the institutions.
One of the most experienced of the experts invited by the AAAS to present during the conference, Irwin Feller, a professor emeritus of economics at Pennsylvania State University’s main campus, was placed on a panel called, “Research Universities: How Many Do We Need? How Many Can We Afford?” He began by impatiently citing various times that past AAAS conferences featured panel discussions of research universities facing economic crises.
The critical difference this time, he allowed, is that the alarm is being driven not by the usual up-and-down cycle of the federal budget, but by state cutbacks. And not just cutbacks, but wholesale questions in many states about their basic commitment to public colleges.
“There is a shift from the view of higher education as both a public and private good,” he said, “to a view of it as a private good.”
Drumbeat for Change
For some of the experts assembled by the AAAS, the invitation presented an opportunity to lecture research universities on how they should change. Debra M. Amidon, founder and chief executive of Entovation International, said American universities need to collaborate more. Those seeking ways to outcompete foreigners are “asking the wrong questions,” she said. Robert D. Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, disagreed, saying competition is needed “to make the U.S. the winner.”
Richard A. Bendis, president and chief executive of Innovation America, said universities need to seek more partnerships with industry. Mr. Feller said he worried that universities were overly concerned with corporate endeavors.
Mr. Feller was among a group that spoke less about the need for universities to change and more about the outside political and economic forces that may now be threatening a system of research and student training that has driven the U.S. economy since World War II.
At least 35 states anticipate revenue shortfalls for the 2012 fiscal year, says the National Conference of State Legislatures. A dozen states are now led by Republican governors who won office last November after promising to cut spending rather than raise taxes.
In many cases, Mr. Feller said, states increasingly appear to be weighing support for research universities solely on the basis of whether they can serve as short-term generators of jobs.
Others cited additional serious problems that government is creating for universities. Michael Mandel, a senior fellow at the Mack Center for Technological Innovation at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, said excessive federal regulation is a huge obstacle to research. Much of the trouble, he said, stems from a tendency among government officials to be “fundamentally mistrustful of innovation.” Mr. Atkinson said universities also are hurt by the refusal of Congress to expand the federal tax credit for research.
Few Signs of Hope
And there’s little expectation for any major change in direction from Washington any time soon. Republicans won control of the House of Representatives last November, having joined the governors from their party in vowing to attack the federal budget deficit almost exclusively by cutting spending, including that spent on scientific research.
The Obama administration has called on Congress to keep its commitment to double the budgets of the government’s three main science agencies within about 10 years. David Marc Pomerantz, the Democratic staff director on the House Appropriations Committee, warned the AAAS conference not to be too optimistic about that happening. “The initial news for science funding is not going to be good in House-passed bills,” he said.
Mr. Beckwith told the conference that he’s concerned that the budget worries are leading many policy makers in Congress and in State Capitols to take a dangerously short-term view about the critical long-term value to the country of research universities.
He listed a few everyday items, such as lasers and car-navigation systems, and explained how their development flowed from basic research and theoretical analysis that had no specific economic goals in mind.
“We need to make sure that as we go about changing this culture,” Mr. Beckwith said in his comments from the audience on Friday, “that we don’t get rid of the culture that produced all of those things.”