"Building the Future at the University of Rhode Island"
Reflections on a RI legislative report

(Archive | Logan | COM Department)

November 24, 2008

Summary: The report of the URI Commission for Research & Innovation is critiqued. The legislative Commission is misidentified; this was not a URI Commission. Premises overstate the relation between university commercializable research and economic development, understate the costs and complexity of university support units in general, and minimalize URI's progress to date. Only six institutions were used for benchmarking, four with medical schools; benchmarks selected were those most appropriate for ranking top universities and less appropriate for development of useful targets for future URI research support. There were no benchmarks for state or institutional funding, the purported focus of the Report. The Report recommendation of bond funding for university operations ($100 million for 20-30 scientists, with no further clarification) sets a bad precedent; the proposed (2010) bond would bypass the normal use of bonds for capital projects and would not respect the normal channels for establishing URI bond priorities. Report specifications for job requirements for the URI Presidential search are presumptive and narrow for the broad mission of URI.

On October 7, The URI Commission for Research & Innovation issued its Report and Recommendations, "Building the Future at the University of Rhode Island: Research, Innovation & Economic Growth" (report (pdf) | summary (pdf) | announcement).

The Report can be taken as a complement to or possibly as an alternative to the draft vision statement offered by the Provost (here | commentary). The open, collegial process of the Provost, as he attempts to engage the campus in thinking about its future, contrasts starkly with the autonomous release of this legislative document. The origin of the Report needs to be clarified and the cover of the document corrected to indicate accurate provenance. The premises, supporting analysis, assertions, recommendations, and implementation approach of the report deserve careful scrutiny by the URI community and University stakeholders. What follows suggests particular areas of concern that others may wish to pursue further.

From the Press Release. "Justice Robert G. Flanders, Jr., Chair of the University of Rhode Island Commission for Innovation and Research, today presented state leadership with a report and set of recommendations detailing steps URI must take to become a nationally competitive research institution. The report and recommendations were presented at the quarterly meeting of the Rhode Island Science and Technology Advisory Council (STAC), which championed the creation of the Commission.

"The Commission used a set of comparative qualitative indicators developed by the Center for Measuring University Performance, together with quantitative indicators recommended by the Commissioners, university research experts, and URI faculty and leadership, to assess URI's current position and formulate recommendations to grow the size and competitiveness of URI's R&D programs; produce a larger, better trained workforce in science and technology; and increase industry engagement and commercialization activities at URI."

Provenance: "The URI Commission for Research & Innovation" was created by the legislature in 2006, at the request of the Rhode Island Science and Technology Advisory Council (STAC) (S2988, pdf). The Commission did not originate from within the University. As a Commission of the RI legislature, the disposition of the report will be decided by the legislature, not the University. Dr. Peter Alfonso, Vice President for Research and Economic Development, was the only URI member of the Commission. Accordingly, the Commission should be more properly referred to as "The STAC Commission for Research & Innovation," and the title page of its document should be corrected to make it clear that the University was not the originator, nor the owner, of this document. The Commission expired, according to the enabling legislation, on September 30, 2008.
The Commission employed a consulting firm, the Clarendon Group, for research and analysis, and staffing from STAC. The 37 page report cost $85,000, according to the Providence Journal.

Organization of the report: The report was structured in six sections, plus appendices:

  1. Premises that identify research universities as centers of innovation and therefore drivers of economic competitiveness.
  2. Benchmarks to establish indicators of relative excellence to be used to improve URI's ability to be a center of innovation.
  3. Conditions asserted as necessary for "improving excellence:" leadership and culture, research capacity, and modernization and flexibility.
  4. Vision, in 3 parts, linked to specific performance indicators of "excellence."
  5. Recommendations mapping vision to strategies (i.e. a precursor to a mission statement).
  6. Implementation plans.

These sections are covered below, followed by a few notes and responses to the Report.

Premises

The central premise of the report is an axiom that university research is strongly related to economic development; this claim is asserted by referencing collectively seven studies listed in an appendix. One of these is the famous MIT/Bank of Boston study showing that MIT graduates could be credited with starting 4000 companies employing 1.1 million employees and, in 1997, worth $232 billion. The other reports document practices and successes in which universities and industries were able to start businesses or to set up research-commercialization centers with ties to university research.

"The link between university research and economic development is well documented. The outputs of research universities can lead directly to the commercialization of new ideas and encourage the creation of high-wage jobs. As engines of innovation, research universities provide businesses with the information and tools they need to respond to changing conditions, tap into new markets, develop new products and processes, and compete in the global innovation economy.

"Universities also stimulate economic development through technology transfer (i.e., the commercialization of research findings through the creation of start-up companies), creating partnerships with business and industry, and fostering a culture in which innovation is rewarded. Public research institutions not only foster innovation, but provide access to higher education—an increasingly important aspect of producing an educated workforce. In order to compete globally both now and in the future, the United States must train a flexible and skilled workforce prepared to work in knowledge-based innovation economy jobs. This training is best accomplished by engaging students in an environment where creativity and innovation are practiced and rewarded. Competitive research universities offer our communities and our country precisely this kind of workforce development tool."

These axioms are charming and alluring, but they are also beguiling and naive. As premises for the three recommendations that they are intended to bolster, they are unfortunately brief and simplistic. They carry not much more than the message "smart people make more money," but the business of running a university and the complex processes of stimulating economic development require far more depth of thought and much greater awareness than can be conveyed in this sort of extended cliche.

Considering the cost and potential importance of the report, it would have been more helpful had the premises been more thoughtfully and extensively laid out. The correlation between research and state wealth is weak, and causal relations require more thinking (e.g., do rich states fund research, or does research make states rich?—see, for example, figure 7 of this report (pdf)). The unique educational role of research universities as the primary vehicle for advanced education in the sciences (both natural and social) and technologies (physical and biological) is relatively easy to establish through arguments based on simple statistics (e.g., Reinventing the Research University (Logan, 1999)). A more intensive examination of the many factors which characterize successful American research universities since World War II could have been gleaned from Roger L. Geiger's Research and Relevant Knowledge (1993)(Amazon); URI is not mentioned in this book, and we should attempt to understand why. A brief encapsulation of factors which influence prospects for success (or, more commonly, failure) of the relation between universities, industry, and economic development (from a chapter with that title) could be obtained from Geiger's more recent Knowledge & Money (2004) (Amazon), or Geiger's forthcoming Tapping the Riches of Science: Universities and the Promise of Economic Growth (January 2009)(Amazon). There is a vast contemporary literature on both sides of commercializable research; for broader perspectives, see also Newman, Couturier, and Scurry, "The Future of Higher Education: Rhetoric, Reality, and the Risks of the Market" (2004), and Bok, "Universities in the Marketplace: The Commercialization of Higher Education" (2003).

The Report's premises fail to address the rich array of factors required for successful collaborations between universities, industries, and local economies. Geiger's (2004, above) analyses of Penn State University, for example, reveal the extensive network of on-campus organized research units devoted to the study of applied fields with unmistakable relevance for the economy (and hence of interest to industry). A few of the other factors discussed at length by Geiger include:

Compare the Report to Geiger, or to the previous RI Economic Policy Council study, "Research Benchmarks: Funding University Research Operations and Infrastructure and Targeting Investment in Research Centers and University-affiliated Research Parks" (RIEPC 2001, pdf):

"It is also assumed that to strengthen links between URI and the State economy, four components must be present. There must first be substantial research operations, well-supported continual commitments to a broad research agenda involving substantial numbers of faculty in areas relevant to the evolving state and regional economy. There must be up-to-date research infrastructure, including good buildings and laboratories and contemporary major items of equipment. To enhance the relevancy of both research and learning, there should also be an active extension of the university, characterized by campus support for technology nurseries and commercialization of intellectual properties produced by campus research. And finally—as is true in any quality organization—URI must adopt a hallmark commitment to perpetual customer feedback, in this case a continual evaluation of the quality of the product (the university’s graduates and intellectual properties) and their relevance to the needs of the marketplace (the industries and government laboratories engaged in leading-edge technologies)."

In a presentation to the Commission on October 12, 2007, Dr. Alfonso outlined URI's current research stance, including organizational structure, current funding sources, and decisions that have already been made to enhance research: many of these are responsive to the suggestions of the previous (RIEPC, 2001) benchmark study. The University has critical structural components in place or in planning stages, including the Division of Research and Economic Development, the Research Foundation, and the Research and Technology Park. The array of funding sources is diverse, including a full spectrum of federal agencies and several industries. The University has a diverse portfolio of patents and extant revenue-returning licenses (income of $1.066 million in FY05, $0.539 million in FY07).

Dr. Alfonso's testimony listed these steps to enhance the research enterprise:

Research improvements also figure prominently in the current URI Strategic Plan, grouped under three goals,

  1. Provide facilities, systems and resources with improved support to meet the research needs of the University.
  2. Increase capability and productivity in the areas of entrepreneurship, technology transfer and commercialization.
  3. Increase the size and competitiveness of graduate programs.

along with appropriate strategies and metrics (here, pdf). URI, despite vexing fiscal limitations, has demonstrated awareness of many of the critical supporting mechanisms that must be in place for successful research commercialization, as well as positive movement toward improving its capacities in technology transfer. That this is both a prerequisite to success and that the University has begun to address major parts of the structural and organizational array needed to couple research to the economy are barely mentioned in the report, relegated to a sidebar. The report asserts that URI is behind other universities "in both research investment and creating a culture that supports research leadership;" this is a premise that downplays ongoing efforts and understates accomplishments, creating an imbalance in the Report between extensive deprecation of URI's culture for research and the minimized reporting of what URI and its hard-working faculty have actually been able to accomplish, much of which goes far to counter the Report's negative portrayals. URI can do better as a research university, but the biased perspective of the review denigrates how well it is actually doing, and for no constructive purpose.

Benchmarking

Benchmarking encompasses a set of techniques used by organizations to improve practices relative to comparable organizations within an industry. Usually, this is based on an implicit assumption that the organization is clear on its core nature, i.e., its mission, its market, its basic functions, and its core processes. Benchmarking identifies organizational behaviors or characteristics and makes fair comparisons with best practices or characteristics elsewhere. The focus is to establish a set of standards and to use these to set pragmatic goals for improvements. In benchmarking, an appropriate comparison group is identified, standards are selected and quantified, differences between the organization's measures and the standards are determined, and quantifiable goals for adjusting in the direction of improvement are set.

The 2001 RIEPC study, Research Benchmarks: Funding University Research Operations and Infrastructure (RIEPC (2001) | 2006 Update | May 2008 Update) sought to improve funding for research at URI. Benchmarks were developed using comparison groups of top research universities (public and private) or against a more restricted group (public research universities without medical schools). Standards selected included scaled (i.e., on a per capita base) measures of research funding. Differences were measured against averages and goals for improvement were set. From the summary abstract (pdf):

"Funding for URI research operations and infrastructure is compared with funding at 133 universities. Adjusted for inflation, total funding for URI research grew 38% from 1980 to 1999; nationally, support grew 139%. Rhode Island ranks 48th in state funds per capita spent on higher education operations, 50th in percentage of state higher education funds spent on research, and 50th in state funds per capita or state funds per $1000 personal income spent on academic research. In 1999, Rhode Island would have required a $61.7 million annual increase (+43%) to reach the national per capita mean of state funds for higher education operations. A $21.6 million annual increase in State or institutional support would have been needed for university research operations to reach the national per capita mean (+412%). URI depends more on federal funds for academic research operations than any of 92 public universities in the comparison group.

"URI spends above average per capita for research in oceanography and psychology, but less than average for engineering, physical sciences, mathematical sciences, computer sciences, life sciences, or social sciences. URI expenditures on research infrastructure are under national averages and significantly less than top 100 research universities. At least $11 million annually is needed for research building construction, laboratory renovation, and equipment replacement."

The STAC Report ignored the 2001 RIEPC Research Benchmarks study and updates (above). Instead, it used studies by the Center for Measuring University Performance, specifically citing "The Myth of Number One: Indicators of Research University Performance."

"To discern URI’s best path to an improved research enterprise and heightened University-led innovation, it is important to understand URI’s current position relative to both peer institutions and benchmark institutions. (We evaluate two sets of benchmark institutions, discussed in greater detail below.) The data points used to develop a comparative picture are drawn from the comprehensive set of indicators developed by The Center for Measuring University Performance (The Center), together with indicators recommended by the Commissioners, university research experts, and URI faculty members and administrators.

The purpose of the Center's indicators, from the Center's July 2000 Annual Report "The Top American Research Universities" (pdf, July 2000; this included the paper, "The Myth of Number One," above) was to address general rankings of top Universities, which may themselves be used as benchmarks:

The Purpose of the Top Universities: "The Center’s interest in this topic comes from the experience of observing universities and their supporters as they pursue improvement programs. Many universities want to get better, to improve their standing among their research university colleagues, and they have a keen interest in the variables that determine institutional performance. Traditional rankings that put universities in order by some weighted index of prestige, resources, or other categories do not help institutions to understand what makes research universities succeed. Sometimes the rankings fail to serve a useful purpose because they use inappropriate criteria. Primarily, however, the difficulty comes from the ranking and weighting process that, in its complexity, obscures the relative strength of the institution’s many elements.

"In addition, weighted rank ordering—while it presents an easily referenced list—does not capture the complexity of American research university mission and performance. These rankings give the false impression that the precise order of institutions reflects precise differences. The very best universities excel in almost everything; very good universities excel in some things and perform less effectively in others. Aspiring research universities do well, but not at a level close to the top performers."

The problem which the Center tries to address ("Who's Number One?") is analogous to trying to rank the importance of Shakespeare, Einstein, Dimaggio, and Aristotle; presumably, each would get top-25-listed as measured among writers, scientists, athletes, and philosophers, and each would be assigned one point. If we also assumed that Aristotle would also be ranked in the top 25 among scientists, he would get two points, and thus be recognized as somehow of an overall higher caliber. Similarly, the Center used nine measures to identify the top research universities:

  1. Total research expenditures (National Science Foundation—Survey of Scientific and Engineering Expenditures at Universities and Colleges; $ / year)
  2. Federal research expenditures (NSF, ibid.; $ / year)
  3. Endowment assets (National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO)—Endowment Study; $ / year)
  4. Annual giving (Council for Aid to Education—Voluntary Support of Education Survey; $ / year)
  5. Faculty members in the National Academies (National Academy of Sciences—Membership Directory; # / institution )
  6. Faculty awards in the Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, and Health (23 grant and fellowship programs; # / institution )
  7. Doctoral degrees (National Science Foundation—Survey of Graduate Students and Post doctorates in Science and Engineering; # degrees awarded between July 1 and June 30)
  8. Postdoctoral appointees (National Science Foundation—Survey of Graduate Students and Post doctorates in Science and Engineering; # / institution)
  9. Entering freshmen SAT scores (The College Board—The College Handbook; median verbal and math SAT scores / institution)

The Center then lists the top 25 institutions in each category. Institutions are awarded one point for being in the top 25 in each category. Institutions are then listed in groups according to total points; the group that is in the top 25 in all nine categories is listed first, with no distinctions made within the group. Public and private institutions are listed separately. The 2000 report listed UC Berkeley, UCLA, U Michigan, and UNC Chapel Hill as public universities each with top-25 status in 9 of the measures and Cal Tech, Columbia, Duke, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Northwestern, Stanford, U Pennsylvania, and Yale as private universities with 9's as well; Brown University was listed in the private university group with 4 of the measures.

Selection of relevant peer institutions for benchmarking by the Center, for purposes of clarifying criteria used for ranking all institutions, involved all institutions, divided into public and private categories. Although the process that emerged produced a limited ranking from the full set, the criteria were applicable broadly within the entire set, and thus the comparison group was patently justifiable. In contrast, the Commission selected six institutions for its comparison group. For the most part, the reasons are obscure.

Having referred to the Center and its measures and procedures, the Commission then erected five categories of its own, each with subcategories:

  1. Research productivity
    1. Growth in federal funding (Center #2, above)
    2. Research and development expenditures (Center #1, above)
    3. Carnegie rating (Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching)
    4. Invention disclosures (Association of University Technology Managers)
    5. Patent applications and patents issued (Association of University Technology Managers)
    6. licensing income (NSF, source not clear, but probably AUTM: See, for example, this.)
  2. Recognition of Faculty and Programs
    1. US News and World Report College Rankings (US News)
    2. Faculty Memberships in National Academies (Center #5, above, Excel) and Nationally Recognized Faculty Awards (Center #6, above, Excel)
    3. Highly Cited Faculty (Thomson Scientific)
  3. Graduate Education and Program Indicators
    1. Number of Doctoral Degrees Granted (Center #7, above)
    2. Number of Doctoral Degree Granting Departments (National Center for Education Statistics)
    3. Number of Postdoctoral Appointments (Center #8, above)
  4. Undergraduate Education and Program Indicators
    1. Average SAT Score for Entering Freshman (Center #9, above)
    2. Number of National Merit and Achievement Scholars (Center #9, above, Excel | National Merit Scholarship Corp.)
  5. Overall Financial Resources
    1. Endowment Assets (cf. Center #3, above)
    2. Annual Giving (cf. Center #4, above)

The Commissions Analysis of Benchmarks: The Commission drew the following conclusions from their benchmarking:

"The comparative indicators paint a stark picture. On most measures URI lags far behind its own self-identified peers, and is even further behind the transforming and best-in-class universities. There are no groups of indicators that can show a perfect picture of where an institution stands relative to its peers. It is clear, however, that URI did not experience the research growth over the past decade that fueled new capacity at other universities. URI has far fewer endowment and annual giving resources to make new investments or to supplement its grants and contracts, and its total research profile sits well below the “to scale” figure of $100 million in annual research awards that serves as a benchmark for research competitiveness.

"To elevate its position and emerge as a nationally competitive research institution, URI must make progress on virtually all fronts. Incremental changes will not be sufficient to drive this transformation. Rather, URI, its leadership, and state leadership must commit to making bold changes and creating the conditions necessary to significantly enhance research and innovation capacity at URI."

Further Analysis of Benchmarks: The Commission's benchmarks were largely drawn from measures used to rank institutions for purposes of establishing prestige. Of the several hundred that could, for example, be drawn from the extensive NSF Science and Engineering Indicators series (2006, here), almost any set could establish that URI was significantly lower ranked than many other comparable (public, research, doctoral granting) institutions. The question of interest here, however, is what benchmarks and what institutions could be most useful in helping URI set itself on a path for improvement. That is, what reasonable set of expectations should we establish as a basis for future actions? The Report fails to improve on previous efforts to characterize relative levels of funding, for example; 50th place among the 50 states is still last, and the report doesn't add any insight that hasn't been established before (again, here). The other measures of "Public Research University Excellence" serve relatively vague purposes. A few comments may be in order:

Conditions

The Report is quite assertive in offering its perspectives on "Preconditions for University Research Excellence:"

"Thriving research universities perform well on quantitative indicators of research excellence and share a number of more qualitative characteristics as well. These necessary characteristics can be thought of as “preconditions” for research excellence. They are few in number, but so significant that there is strong consensus on what they are. They were identified from interviews with Commissioners and outside experts as well as from reports detailing the experiences of other universities and research organizations, and refined with input from the Commissioners and URI faculty members and administrators."

Preconditions

  1. Leadership and Culture
    1. Institutional leadership that integrates research as a key element of the institution’s mission and strategic plan
    2. Research as an integrated element of the institution’s culture
  2. Research Capacity
    1. Dedicated resource streams that support research activity
    2. Graduate programs and a graduate student support system for research activity
    3. A strong, research-oriented faculty
      1. A faculty reward system that incentivizes research activity
      2. A faculty recruitment system that prioritizes research expertise
    4. Partnerships and collaborations—public and private, academic and corporate—specific to research activity
  3. Modernization and Flexibility
    1. Administrative and organizational structures that facilitate research

The Report provides no references or details about the individuals, references, or surveys it claims it used. There is no data on the number of deans, faculty, or students sampled, nor any indication of when this took place or where it might be reported (e.g., the basis for "Average Rating of Preconditions at URI (Deans, Faculty and Graduate Students)," reported in Table 17. Similarly, there is no hint at the underlying basis for claims of administrative failure at URI:


"URI’s leadership (both institutional and governing boards), culture, and support structures have not historically been oriented toward research growth and entrepreneurship. The need for leadership and higher top-down prioritization of research was emphasized strongly in most conversations at and about URI. Faculty, graduate students, and administrators are all aware of its paramount importance. Although pockets of research-focused leadership were identified at the College and departmental levels, and recent steps toward improving research capacity were recognized, almost all URI constituents expressed significant desire for the university’s overall leadership and administration to place greater priority on research."

In citing examples of favorable situations at Ohio State and Purdue, the Report makes it clear that Presidential leadership and the presence of on-campus support for licensing are important. Mention of similar leadership and existing support capacities at URI, is relegated to an easily overlooked "Recent Progress at URI" text-box (see above).

The Report refers to campus perceptions about research culture in disparaging terms, but again without a hint at the underlying basis of claims (sources, numbers, etc.). This may be an example of an institution that is unusually progressive in seeking feedback, but without reference or substantiation, this part of the Report suffers from the appearance of hearsay or fabrication.

"Discussions at and about URI revealed that the University’s historical positioning has created a pervasive culture that may not actively discourage entrepreneurship and innovation, but certainly does not encourage it. Those at URI who are not involved in research do not see research as fundamental to URI’s activities and mission. This is particularly true for undergraduates, and the perception appears to be shared by the general public."

And again, there is this, which suffers the same fault. What are the administrative and cultural barriers, where is the subculture and pockets of research, etc., and who are the anonymous and un referenced administrators, faculty, and graduate students who are being acknowledged?

"Administrators, faculty, and graduate students at URI believe there is enormous potential for research excellence, but it is blocked by financial, administrative, and cultural barriers. They identified a subculture or undercurrent at URI that is waiting to come above-ground, citing existing pockets of research and collaboration at URI that can serve as a foundation for growing research excellence and attracting new early- and mid-career research scientists."

The litany of ills and cures is a familiar one. Research is under-funded, under-appreciated, etc., in every way, from hiring to rewarding, to providing administrative support services. The presentation appears to suggest that the fault lies mostly within; thirty years of declining state support, for example, is not mentioned. It would be a classic exercise in institutional self-flagellation were the primary authors internal to the University, as may well be the case.

Finally, there is the suggestion that while things are counter-research at URI, there is at least one savior in the State:

"While Rhode Island has begun, through its Science and Technology Advisory Council and Research Alliance, to create new grant opportunities, collaboration incentives, and recognition programs that benefit URI faculty, among others, few if any such incentives reportedly exist at URI itself."

The Report cites five examples of successful research projects at URI:

  1. Center of Excellence for Explosives Detection, Mitigation, and Response
  2. Cancer Treatment (Reshetnyak and Andreev)
  3. Institute of Immunology and Informatics
  4. Cancer Prevention Research Center
  5. Center of Excellence on Research on Offshore Renewable Energy

Two examples of centers elsewhere (in West Virginia and Arizona State) are also cited. It isn't clear why either list is presented, as there are many other distinguished research centers at URI.

Vision

The report suggests that URI needs to set higher priority on "significantly expanding its research activity, increasing industry involvement in its research programs, and sending more graduates into the workforce with science, technology, engineering, and mathematical skills." This will be accomplished by addressing needs in three areas:

  1. Leadership and Culture. Here, the primary suggestion is to take the "brass ring opportunity" of a pending presidential search to get the right kind of leadership (see Recommendations, next).
  2. Modernization and Flexibility. Here the vision is for "new operating and financial models," although these are not clarified.
  3. Adding Research Capacity. The Report calls for "adding significant numbers of new research faculty, attracting top researchers with financial and intellectual incentives, aggressively pursuing grant opportunities and private sector partnerships to raise the total levels of research funding, and raising non-tuition revenue to support the research enterprise."

Specific measures of success are:

  1. Achieve a “Research University/Very High Activity” designation from the Carnegie Foundation by 2015.
  2. Double total levels of research and development funding in the next five years, achieving total research funding of $140 million annually by 2015.
  3. Achieve measurable economic impact in Rhode Island through the development of a technology-oriented workforce, technology transfer, and greater collaboration with industry.
Recommendations and Implementation

The Commissions three priority recommendations follow from the vision of success:

  1. Attract a new President with demonstrated experience in building university-based research capacity, and who is capable of leading a transformative change effort at URI. The Commission recommended that "The presidential search committee must identify, recruit, and hire a candidate familiar with university research and research enterprise, experienced in creating transformative change, and committed to the possibilities for URI as articulated in this report. The search committee should use this report during the search process. In support of this objective, Saul Kaplan, a member of this Commission, has been appointed to the presidential search committee [emphasis added]."
    "Candidates for the presidency should have a track record of guiding institutional growth and transformation; should have a depth of understanding about scientific research, either through administrative positions or their own scholarship; and should be familiar with the unique culture of higher education."
    (Note: The final URI Presidential Search Profile (Nov. 24, 2008) did not contain specific language giving this a priority (MSWord doc))
  2. Create a sustainable financial model for URI that provides university leadership and the Board of Governors with the flexibility to make necessary investments in building research capacity that will make URI a stronger research-based university. Here the intent is to get everyone on board to steer funding toward research, including funding from future capital campaigns, and to make research a priority in whatever ways this can be accomplished. The Commission also seeks escape from funding caps and state controls on costs and revenues (including legislative oversight, state regulations, and paper-based processes); recommendations also include new freedom to exceed hiring caps (e.g., to remove URI employees from being considered State employees) and to borrow. The Commission also recommends a fast-tracking of faculty promotions and raises based on research "productivity and quality."
  3. Jump-start URI’s research capacity with a $100-million public investment through a bond initiative to capitalize the attraction of 20-30 world class research faculty, and to provide state matching funds to catalyze federal research grant procurement efforts. Specifically, the Commission suggests that, presumably STAC would "Work with state leadership to put in place a leadership structure that can effectively manage this investment and ensure that funds are deployed in a manner that maximizes this catalytic investment." Priority areas for investment "in which excellence is established or emerging and which promise valuable economic benefits" include ocean and marine science, biotechnology, and green energy."
Responses to the Report

Public response to the report has been generally muted. Both the Providence Journal and the Providence Business News responded to the press release. The ProJo (Jennifer Jordan) looked a little more deeply in its coverage (but did not editorialized elsewhere); for example:

...

"Longtime URI President Robert L. Carothers announced last month that he will step down in June, after 17 years. More recently, Carothers has placed a higher priority on research — an effort the next president will be expected to build upon, said Jack Warner, state commissioner for higher education.

“The question for the next president is how do you build on that and focus attention on the research mission of the university as well as developing other funding streams,” Warner said. “We need someone with a thorough understanding of the role of a research institution and a track record of success in order to enhance research performance.”

"Last year, Carothers hired Peter Alfonso to oversee research, elevating his $180,000 vice provost position to a cabinet-level vice president position. URI also created an independent Research Foundation to help faculty commercialize their inventions and form spin-off companies. The foundation recently hired a vice president and assistant vice president to work directly with professors and researchers. The university also hopes to eventually open a research and technology park north of campus, directly across from a $60-million biotechnology center under construction.

...

"URI, says Kaplan, needs to run “less like a government agency and more like a business.” Among the recommendations are allowing URI to build new dormitories without legislative approval and making workers university employees, rather than state employees.

"The report stops short of calling for the privatization of URI, but President Carothers has said publicly that if the trend of diminishing state support continues at its current pace, URI will receive no state money by 2013, and will be, in effect, an institution entirely funded by tuition, fees and grants.

"This year, the state is contributing just 11 percent of URI’s operating budget. A decade ago, the state contributed 26 percent."

The Providence Business News reported on the press release (October 7) and followed up with a story based on Report recommendations for URI fiscal autonomy (October 14).

The South County Independent offered an editorial, "Another State Boondoggle:"

"All of this makes for a great press conference, but we have to splash some cold water of reality on the EDC and this study commission. They are talking about a $100 million bond in 2010 to hire 20 to 30 professors. That’s $100 million at a time when the state budget is $66.8 million in the hole, barely three months into the fiscal year. Yes, $100 million that won’t address any of URI’s other problems – such as its closed art gallery and other cutbacks and the upcoming mid-year tuition hike.

"Remember the Greenhouse Compact, anyone? In 1984 voters were asked to spend $250 million to create incubators for new businesses. By an 80 percent margin, they trounced the bond and the premise that it would create 60,000 new jobs.

"There is no way that tax-weary Rhode Islanders are going to invest $100 million in the university to hire 20 to 30 people, when the state can’t even support the day-to-day operation of URI and its sister colleges. Especially when there’s no guarantee that shifting URI’s focus even more toward research will generate the economic development the commission envisions. (URI’s Center for Biotechnology and Life Sciences is supposed to create a new age of bio-tech jobs in Rhode Island. We’ll see.)

This latest report on URI is destined to take its place on the dusty shelf of history, where lie many similar pie-in-the-sky proposals. It will end up there because the commission ignored the essential reality of Rhode Island’s politics and economy. Voters traditionally don’t like to invest their own money in foggy job-creation proposals. Nearly 25 years later, this $100 million bond is just another Greenhouse Compact in the making."

URI's AAUP President, Betsy Cooper, commented (AAUP News, October 2008) "As we watch our financial future become more obscure, we are trying to clarify our academic future: with a new President and a new mission. In our search for preservation of both of these futures, it is important that we not become an Institution of Corporate Research, but remain an Institution of Academic Research."

Certainly, there are aspects of the Report that deserve note and further scrutiny. In addition to inadequacies of methodology and clarity (several examples are cited above, but there are many more that were not mentioned), there are three concerns that are especially troubling:

  1. There is a major conflict of interest and a question of ethics in having one person simultaneously serving as co-chair of STAC, while also being the URI Dean most likely to benefit from the proposed $100 million bond. The suggestion that STAC work with State (not University) leaders to develop a leadership and management structure to govern funds undermines University autonomy. Setting up a single individual with significant influence on awarding, spending, accounting, and auditing use of funds violates principles of accountability. Appointment of Saul Kaplan to the URI Presidential Search Committee with the express purpose of supporting a narrow selection criteria is also highly manipulative; universities are more than economic development gimmicks!
  2. The proposal to seek operating funds—i.e., money for faculty and staff salaries—via a bond proposal sets a bad precedent. Efforts to provide a match-based annual authorization of research funds have been the subject of bills proposed by Rep. Eileen Naughton (District 22, Warwick) since the mid 1990s. The University did not initially support these efforts adequately; in the first year of Naughton's legislative efforts, for example, a House Finance Committee heard the proposed matching funds characterized as a means to "reduce the burden of research" at the University (i.e., the bill was seen as a means to free money committed to matching research grants so that it could be used for non-research purposes), contrary to the legislative attempt to augment, not replace, research funds. From approximately 2002 to 2005, the University failed to coordinate its efforts to encourage research matching funds, with competing bills (mainly differing on the question of control of funds within the University), originating with the involvement of competing factions within the University, nullifying each other in Finance Committees; even in the face of formal endorsement of one bill by the President and Faculty Senate in 2006-07, a competing bill was organized from within the University, again thwarting the effort. In 2007-08, the President of Faculty Senate declined to advance local support for any research bill for URI, declaring that this would be interpreted as University greed; instead, the University took the third highest percentage cut of any major State agency (perhaps a sign of University altruism?). Although the University clearly needs greater internal discipline and a more coordinated and aggressive relation with the legislature on the question of matching operating funds for research, this is no excuse to abandon the pursuit of increases in standard operating funds to support the research mission of the University.
    The University and the State traditionally have reserved general revenue bonds for capital projects. To seek funds, and to accept the obligation to pay interest on the bond, for ongoing positions at URI creates an unacceptable future burden on the institution, not only for debt service, but also for continuation of salary and benefits and the additional operating needs of the new researchers. This is similar to the current $10 million burden imposed by exceeding the intention of the new Biotechnology bond initiative by after-the-fact addition of administrative suites, leaving the University with an empty fourth floor and a major fund-raising headache when its latest building opens next year (more).
    The bond end-run openly challenges current funding priorities already established through normal administrative channels of the University and its Board. It is a move that threatens important needs and priorities elsewhere in the University. Currently, for example, the FY 2007-2011 Higher Education Capital Improvement Plan (CIP, pdf) lists a total of $609,515,270 in projects costs. This includes $290,125,487 in new construction, including the 2006 voter-approved $65,200,000 for a new Pharmacy building and several others
    1. New Chemistry Building—$50,000,000
    2. Nursing & Associated Health Building—$25,000,000
    3. Energy Conservation/Performance Contracting—$15,960,000
    4. Exterior Renovation – East, Quinn, Taft & Washburn Halls—$6,208,277
    5. Master Plan Landscaping & Paving—$7,500,000
    6. Police Facility Expansion & Renovation—$25,000
    7. International Center—$3,760,069
    8. Roger Williams Complex Renovation—$9,266,622
    9. Washburn Hall Renovation—$8,202,085
    10. Morrill Hall Renovations—$11,374,008
    11. Woodward Hall Renovation—$15,289,293
    12. Fine Arts Center Renovation—$42,840,608
    13. Ranger Hall Phase II—$9,856,799
    14. Fogarty Hall Renovation—$19,642,726
    How does a body external to the University presume to put the needs of one component of the University ahead of other long-standing capital needs, in the process doing so without going through established channels?
  3. This report cost $85,000, a large expense during a time of unprecedented State budget crisis. It ignored the 2001 RIEPC Research Benchmark study of URI research and drew no new conclusions capable of shedding additional light on URI's status as a research enterprise. It made no practical suggestions for realistic or incremental improvements in State funding to reverse the erosion of support for research that a better analysis would have easily documented. The selection of sample benchmark institutions was meager, poorly rationalized, and statistically meaningless. There were no critical time-series data on research expenditures, nor were there any comparative data at all on state or institutional support for university capital, operations, or research. There was a total lack of thought in not specifying with any degree of precision at all just how the money would be spent, beyond the sure-to-annoy-voters vagueness of "20-30" positions. The thoughtlessness of the suggested amount, debt-serviced mechanism, and pace of the "jump-start" approach—throwing money at the problem during today's State financial meltdown—is especially egregious.

    4. If the SC Independent is correct, this Report is headed for a dusty shelf. Before it settles there, the University should think once more about how the Report came to be written, and how it reflects on the ability of the University to govern itself with order and mutually agreed upon collegiality and self-discipline.

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