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No
Knowledge,
No
Knowledge Economy
The
brief from the governor: Achieve
research
excellence in Virginia. But first, a higher
ed summit had to rekindle understanding of why
R&D matters.
It’s
hard to be a prophet in your own land, so it was
good that Jim Clinton, executive director of the
Southern Growth Policies Board, traveled north
from
Raleigh
to address the
Governor’s Higher Education Research Summit in
Newport News
May 1.
Clinton’s group has
chronicled the successes of southern states in
attracting industry and innovating in the
“Southern Innovation Index.”
Virginia
scores better
than most states on the index of 56 indicators
that measure research and development trends over
the last three decades ("Advance
Look," September 16,
2002
). But before
contented back-patting could settle in among
summit participants,
Clinton
noted that
there exists about a $2.5 billion gap between Virginia’s percentage
of industry R&D compared with its share of the
national economy. From his vantage point, Clinton
has heard all
the excuses from Louisiana, West Virginia
and other
states on why cheap land, low wages and low taxes
still work in a branch plant economy. “No
knowledge, no knowledge economy,” is Clinton’s blunt
rebuttal.
Gov.
Mark R. Warner convened the summit at the Herbert
H. Bateman Virginia Advanced Shipbuilding and
Carrier Integration Center in Newport News to hear
the report of his Committee on Research
Competitiveness and Centers of Excellence, to
bring experts from the National Science
Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the
Department of Defense together with Virginia
university and research leaders and to challenge
Virginia colleges and universities to increase the
estimated $607 million in current R&D spending
to $1 billion by the end of the decade. Major ups.
Virginia
Tech President Charles W. Steger, who chaired the
reporting committee, didn’t attempt to sugarcoat
the findings of the State Council on Higher
Education in Virginia (SCHEV) that state
institutions lag behind in attracting and
retaining world-class researchers, that there
remain serious shortfalls in research space, that
some state policies actually are barriers to
R&D and that the focus, sustained investment
and collaboration that mark successful R&D
programs elsewhere are missing in whole or in part
in the Commonwealth.
Steger
didn’t butter up attendees by
complimenting every institution either. He made
clear, instead, that only Virginia Tech and the University
of Virginia
are in the top
100 research institutions nationally and that
Virginia Tech, UVA and
Virginia
Commonwealth
University
account for
about 80 percent of all university R&D
programs in the state.
Further,
as outlined by a participant from the National
Institutes of Health (NIH), there is the challenge
of re-engineering the research enterprise, itself.
The scale and complexity of research going
forward, NIH suggests, require more
multidisciplinary teams and larger and better
coordinated resource sharing teams, but also
continued focus on investigator-initiated research
strategies. Since NIH is asking for $27 billion in
federal funds in FY2004, its thoughts on
integrating research networks, boosting research
informatics, training new scientists, translating
research more quickly into the marketplace and
rebuilding public trust in R&D are worth
book-marking.
So
how do we get to a billion dollars from here? Take
focus first. Steger’s committee recommended
identifying the programs where excellence is
likely and where alignment with federal research
strategies is possible, then making strategic
investments to link the two. Not every university
will become a research university in this scenario
and not every research program will become a
ranked program. The committee also recommended
that roles of higher education institutions be
categorized and investment strategies going
forward be based on these roles. This is a
division of labor that individual institutions
have resisted in the name of equity, but that is
driven by a hard-scrabble budget environment that
itself could span the decade.
Take
investment second. Despite federal budget trends
from skyrocketing deficits to tax cuts to
increased defense and homeland security
operational spending, total federal R&D funds
are set to rise 4.4 percent according to other
summit participants. NIH and defense research
grows robustly, but non-defense R&D funds will
grow by just 0.1 percent and federal R&D funds
outside the NIH actually shrink 3.4 percent in
FY2004. Increased competition for a fairly finite
number of federal research dollars is the main
reason Virginia universities and the Center for
Innovative Technology formed the Virginia
Institute for Defense and Homeland Security
earlier this year.
Competitiveness,
not just an increased effort, is important.
California, for example, not only has a
centralized university structure that coordinates
dollar and program requests to Congress and
federal agencies, it has 52 members of the U.S.
House of Representatives. Virginia has 11.
But
according to the Southern Growth Policies
Board’s Clinton, it still comes down to
collaboration and partnering -- among
institutions, across levels of government and with
industry. The essence of partnering, Clinton
concluded, requires trust (everyone invests),
reciprocity (everyone wins) and results (everyone
can measure). Unfortunately, trust and reciprocity
can be unnatural acts among consenting adults,
particularly in a partisan political year with
sharp edges and budget holes.
Virginia
Tech’s Steger reported his committee saw the
need for a new effort aimed at the General
Assembly and the public to articulate the value of
university research on the economic well-being of
the Commonwealth. Whatever the scientific
equivalent of “Amen” is rose to the lips of
summit participants. But fellow university
president Alan Merten of George Mason University
still felt compelled to note the difference
between being involved in such an effort and
committing to results.
A
new consensus on the contribution of research to
the quality of life and economic successes in the
Commonwealth won’t form spontaneously. Nor will
adequate resources fall from the sky. Education
and communication are necessary, but some
bare-knuckled budget battles are in store, too.
Managing the downside risk of inaction isn’t
enough. Real leadership from the top to restore
Virginia government as a reliable partner is job
one.
Finally,
SCHEV executive director Phyllis Palmiero used a
quote in summit summation, “Excellence cannot be
bought, but must be paid for.” Every candidate
for the General Assembly in 2004 needs to debate
that proposition.
--
May
12, 2003
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