We are at an inflection point.
For four score years or so, the research enterprise that fueled the American innovation engine was built on the Bell Labs model and the NSF model. In the latter, a social contract was implicitly agreed upon between the American people and their elected officials and the country’s top universities after the adoption of “Science: The Endless Frontier,” written by Vannevar Bush for President Truman in the concluding months of WWII. In this contract, much research would be carried out at universities, including private ones, and, through both federal/local tax benefits and government budgetary allocations, public resources would be used as the primary funding source for research at these universities. They would then carry out both the “knowledge dissemination” and the “knowledge creation” mission. The National Science Foundation was subsequently created in 1950, and the Sputnik moment accelerated the U.S. government’s investment across many funding agencies. The peace dividend of the 1990s was shared with these agencies, especially the National Institutes of Health. Both models were based on essentially a monopoly enjoyed by the funding source. Both were choices made, indeed well made, but these were not and are not the only choices.
Now at the midpoint between the end of WWII and the end of the 21st century, the American public wants to explore a new social contract where federal tax dollars assume a smaller portion of the financing equation for research carried out in universities.
Daily twists and turns aside, is this mostly a transient process, or will it be long-lasting? Academia might not be going back to the same good ride of the past 75 years. A new equilibrium for university research could emerge. This premise bounds the scope of the rest of my remarks, knowing that the arguments for resuming the last three-quarters of a century into the future centuries have already been articulated by wiser souls in passionate public advocacy.
In this talk, we ask a practical question: “If fundamental changes are coming ashore anyway, what can we do to maximize the vitality of university research in the new situation? In particular, how should universities work with private capital, both profit-seeking and philanthropic ones, in future decades?”
