BY PHILLIP MANNING
The problems facing the world today are too big for little science. The lone-wolf approach may have worked for Edison and the light bulb, but a few scientists piddling around in a lab are not going to solve global warming or develop a replacement for fossil fuels. “The days when a single scientist worked alone or with a small group over many years to produce a body of work worthy of a Nobel Prize are mostly past,” according to the authors of “Engines of Innovation.”
Big teams funded by big money are what’s needed. And the best place to find those resources are in the country’s big research universities. Perhaps not surprisingly, both authors work for just such an institution. Holden Thorp is Chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; his coauthor is University Entrepreneur in Residence at the same school.
Universities, the authors write, are “hubs of creativity.” What’s needed to harness that creativity in useful projects is entrepreneurial thinking. Entrepreneurs are “change agents,” and “[h]igh-impact innovation requires an entrepreneurial mindset that views big problems as big opportunities.” If entrepreneurship is introduced in more of America’s universities, they will emerge, as “engines of innovation,” which can tackle the planet’s most vexing problems.
The authors give examples of university settings where the entrepreneurial approach is being successfully used. Most of them are multidisciplinary centers, such as MIT’s Langer Lab and Stanford’s Bio-X. Both labs have tackled hard problems and produced commercially successful products. Much of their success, the authors believe, is due to contact between scientists from different disciplines. The importance placed on collaboration was illustrated early in the Bio-X project. The lab building was over budget. A committee decided to eliminate the eating area. Jim Spudich, the driving force behind the lab, responded, “cancel the laboratories and build the cafeteria.”
Thorp and Goldstein make no attempt to provide a balanced approach as to how a research university should be run. They are unabashed advocates for big teams undertaking big projects. Unfortunately, what can get lost in concentrating on big science is little science. The authors, of course, do not recommend eliminating more traditional scholars — either in the sciences or the humanities. But their roles in the entrepreneurial university would surely be diminished.
Some academics believe that research-dominated universities shortchange a key university function: educating students. The authors touch on this issue only briefly: “It is commonplace in higher education,” they write, “to say that good research supports good teaching, and we believe this will continue to be the case.” Many academics and students disagree. In their book, “Higher Education? How Colleges Are wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids — and What We Can Do About It,” Professor Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus quote a survey in which students rate teachers on “helpfulness” and “availability.” They discovered that ”the most satisfied students were at smaller schools ... Professors at large state universities whose faculties are urged to pursue research scored notably lower.”
Thorp and Goldstein have developed their own measures of success. And how undergraduates judge the faculty is not one of them. They propose that performance be measured by the number of applications to the university, the amount of research-grant funding, and gift income.
By now, it should be clear that there are at least two visions of what a university
should be. One emphasizes attacking the world’s big problems. The other
stresses educating undergraduates. Equally clearly, there is a place in the
educational system for both types of institutions. Thorp and Goldstein make
a strong case for their vision.
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