State governments want high-tech economies that can compete globally, and they are increasingly looking to universities to help them do it.
Gov. Ed Rendell's Jan. 11 announcement of a $6 million investment in Pennsylvania higher education and academic medical institutions is just a recent example of how the government is partnering with schools to enhance the economy.
Penn will receive $458,000 from the state to recruit two new faculty members and $250,000 for technology transfer and commercialization, including job creation and economic expansion, Penn Vice Provost for Research Perry Molinoff said. The grants come from the Keystone Innovation Zone program, created in 2003, which funds community-university endeavors in technology transfer and entrepreneurship.
"Good-paying jobs are often associated nowadays not with working in a big steel mill but with working in a laboratory," Penn Government and Community Relations Vice President Vanda McMurtry said, adding that higher education can work with government officials to promote a high-tech economy, with universities generating innovations and training workers.
However, Molinoff said that the long duration of and variations in government-university collaborations make it hard to make out a clear trend.
Don Kettl, director of Penn's Fels Institute of Government, predicts that university-government development partnerships will be strong and long-lasting. He said that Penn could be especially influential in economic improvement because of its successes revitalizing West Philadelphia and the University's impending eastward expansion.
"Put those two things together and Penn is in a simply extraordinary position to be able to engage in the kinds of growth strategies that officials around the country are struggling mightily to try to promote," Kettl said.
Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development spokesman Kevin Ortiz said that Rendell has taken university-government collaboration to a new level with the Keystone grants.
Such joint efforts have yielded remarkable results beyond Pennsylvania, Kettl said. He mentioned the key role of local universities in the development of Dell Inc. computers in Austin, Texas, stem cell research in Madison, Wis., and projects in California's Silicon Valley.
McMurtry said that colleges' and universities' development efforts will change the way they are perceived, especially by those outside higher education.
In his recent conversations with local, state and federal officials, McMurtry said that the word "partnership" has arisen dozens of times and that he is encouraged. Both he and Reggie Solomon, program director of Yale University's Office of New Haven and State Affairs, noticed a trend toward a view of universities as partners rather than forces to be reckoned with.
"People aren't looking at universities as ivory towers anymore, not when they're looking to them for economic and community development," McMurtry said. "Having an institution like Penn in the middle of a city like Philadelphia -- literally thousands of talented, educated, motivated people -- what a resource!"
Besides an improved image, Kettl cited favorable tax treatments, government funding for research projects and infrastructure improvements like roads as benefits for higher education from these partnerships.
He added that because of declining government support for state universities, university-government development projects are especially important for these schools to prove their worth to government officials and taxpayers.
McMurtry and Solomon said that universities are optimal sources of development because their locations are relatively permanent and they tend to plan further into the future than do government officials. McMurtry also emphasized that universities are non-profit organizations.
McMurtry said that, while education and research should remain the "meat and potatoes" of higher education, public policy officials are focusing on their role in economic expansion.
He warned that government officials "could become so obsessed with this idea that [universities] are really interesting incubators of economic development that they could lose sight of the fact that there are people here trying to learn things."
Higher calling - The state government is looking to higher ed to help build a globally competitive economy - Gov. Rendell has recently invested $6 million in initiatives
