Annex A-Innovative Approaches

Innovative Approaches Drawn from National Models

VI. The University of Hawaiʻi system can benefit from the study of innovative approaches at university systems across the country that address financing, community service, development of job-producing academic programs, renewal and modernization of facilities, and other ways of stimulating the economy.

As noted by the Chronicle of Higher Education in its 2019 publication, The Innovation Imperative, “Everyone is abuzz about ‘innovation’ these days, and the hype can overshadow real work and progress.” This section of the report seeks to identify some areas in which innovative approaches might benefit the University of Hawaiʻi system as it plans for its “third decade” efforts. Already, in the section above on technology, the report has identified ways in which information and communication technology, augmented by artificial intelligence and big data, can have transformative effects at universities. But even in this realm, as the Chronicle publication demonstrates in the chart below, “campus-wide adoption of particular innovations, as reported by college IT leaders, is not as common as it may seem.”

Figure 19: Where Colleges Stand on Innovation

Campuswide adoption of particular innovations as reported by college IT leaders is not as common as it may seem
Innovation approach	Unaware or not yet adopting	Planning on piloting initial deployment	Expanding deployment	Institutionwide deployment
Active-learning classrooms	20%	31%	41%	8%
Open educational resources	37%	31%	28%	4%
Predictive analytics for student success	37%	35%	21%	7%
Mobile-app development	42%	23%	24%	11%
Predictive analytics for institutional performance	51%	33%	14%	2%
Predictive learning analytics (course level)	61%	26%	10%	3%
XR (extended reality) for teaching and learning	62%	26%	12%	0%
Games and gamification	63%	24%	13%	0%
Adaptive learning	64%	22%	12%	2%

Note: Percentages may not add to 100 due to rounding.

A. New approaches to managing university finances that have been successful in the face of limited state investment and rising tuition:

Increasing recruitment of students who will pay higher rates of tuition: For example, Purdue University has reduced its in-state student intake by approximately 4,000 over the last ten years — while increasing its out-of-state and international student intake by about 5,000 — as these students pay higher tuition largely without the need of financial aid. As pointed out above, however, in recent years U.S. universities have had difficulties in navigating the highly competitive international student market. And at its two main university campuses the UH System already appears to have more than 30% of its undergraduate student body drawn from out-of-state — with Mānoa above and Hilo just below the state’s 35% cap on such enrollments. An option for the state, in the face of heavy out-migration by Hawaiʻi resident students, is to raise the caps.

Increasing use of Prior Learning Assessment (PLA), which validates learning outside the institution. PLA thereby allows students to reduce the number of classes needed to earn an academic credential by receiving credit for their prior knowledge and life experience. A student’s progress toward the degree thus tends to be less expensive, more self-paced, and more career oriented. If students — either through workplace training, outside reading, or purely life experience — happen to have the competence and knowledge required for a particular subject, they can take an exam or submit a portfolio and get credit without having to take a class, thus having a positive impact on both retention and graduation rates. Title IV funding (financial aid) is available for some of these programs (e.g., at the University of Wisconsin and Southern New Hampshire University) — a sign that the U.S. Department of Education recognizes their validity. By one estimate, more than 600 institutions are either exploring or have launched PLA programs. Their popularity with students and employers will continue to rise in the wake of the pandemic-induced disruption of the U.S, labor market and the need for more efficient pathways for economic mobility. Given the relatively high proportion of Hawaiʻi adults with some college credit but no degree, the market would seem to exist for UH .

A 2020 report from the Council on Adult and Experiential Learning and WICHE, “Recognizing Learning in the 21st Century,” studied the relationship between student outcomes and PLA, involving almost 25,000 adult students at 72 institutions. The study found that PLA increased by 17% the likelihood that an adult student would complete a degree program. Completers with PLA credit had a shorter time to degree, while increasing the number of additional credits earned in residence by roughly the equivalent of a semester. The study recommends that institutions make sure that PLA options are available and promoted. ^xliii

The University of Memphis is partnering with West Tennessee Healthcare to help adult learners make faster progress toward earning their degree. The initiative uses credit-by- exam, adaptive learning, and experimental learning to eliminate the need for adult learners to fulfill coursework that they have already mastered. They are scaling the partnership to engage additional employers in the region through the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities (APLU)’s Collaborative Opportunity Grants program. Portland State University has worked with APLU to develop reTHINK PSU, a campus-wide effort to deliver an education that serves more students with better outcomes, while containing costs through curricular innovation, community engagement and effective use of technology. One example is the university’s flexible degree program. Initiated in 2014, this program offered greater access to undergraduate and graduate offerings by creating online pathways for adult learners. ^xliv

Increasing use of distance learning can have beneficial financial results by reducing instructional costs and improving student retention. A five-year study conducted by the National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT), entitled the “Program in Course Redesign,” annually involved 50,000 students at 30 public institutions. The program showed that use of technology could both enhance quality (contrary to the Brookings study cited earlier) and reduce cost. “Results show improved student learning in twenty-five of the thirty projects; the remaining five show learning equal to that found in traditional formats. All thirty institutions reduced their costs by 37% on average (from 20% to 77%) and produced a collective annual savings of $3.1 million. Of the twenty-four that measured retention, eighteen showed noticeable increases.” ^xlv

Online Program Manager (OPM) organizations can benefit both universities and nontraditional, working-adult students. OPMs help traditional universities build and maintain their online degree or program offerings, while opening new and flexible options to nontraditional students. Generally, through a revenue share model, the university provides the content, while the OPM primarily puts it online and leads the marketing efforts. One leader in this market is 2U, which, for example, partners with the University of North Carolina to deliver an online master’s degree in public health. A well-publicized player in this market is Coursera, which works with the University of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and HEC Paris, among others offering 3900+ courses and specializations in partnership with more than 190 universities and companies, according to its website. Companies like Trilogy Education partner with top universities to deliver in-person skills training (“coding bootcamps”) on-campus in fields such as coding and cybersecurity. Other companies like Orbis Education partner with universities to help bridge the healthcare provider shortage through a hybrid approach to pre-licensure healthcare programs, while ExecOnline partners with top business schools to deliver executive leadership courses online. As noted above, however, the online marketplace is crowded with well-established university players and company partners, and a later-starter needs to have special strengths to hope for a larger role in it.

Income Share Agreements (ISA): Instead of charging students tuition — which often requires them to take out thousands of dollars in loans — students go to school for free and are required to pay back a percentage of their income after graduation, but only if they get a job with a good salary. The idea has been experimented with and talked about for years. “But what’s happening at Lambda School, an online learning start-up founded in 2017 with the backing of Y Combinator, has captivated venture capitalists. Their investments are being used to turn Lambda, which has focused on subjects like coding and data science, into a multidisciplinary school offering half-year programs in professions where there is significant hiring demand, like nursing and cybersecurity. It’s an expansion that could be a precursor to Lambda becoming a full-scale university. Lambda is being closely watched by educators, the student debt complex and even Wall Street.” ^xlvi

Purdue University says it is the first four-year institution in the country to offer the ISA option. Under Purdue’s Back a Boiler program, graduates make payments for ten years after graduation. The percentage graduates pay depends on their major and the amount of funding they receive. The less they make, the less they are required to pay. And if they do not work, they do not pay anything.

Outcomes-based funding (or performance funding) uses public money to encourage colleges and universities to increase the numbers and percentages of students who earn high-quality degrees, certificates, and other credentials. It funds colleges and universities based on how well they perform on key metrics. Historically, public institutions were funded by state tax dollars primarily based on the number of students enrolled.

Performance funding shifts a portion of these dollars from an enrollment-based model to an outcomes-based model. Commonly used outcomes include student retention rates, transfer rates from two- to four-year institutions, credit hours earned, graduation rates, degrees conferred, and job placement rates. Institutions earn funds by graduating, not simply enrolling, students. Performance funding was deemed the solution to a funding mechanism that failed to reward colleges for actually graduating students.

A primary goal is to better align state’s goals with the institution’s to increase postsecondary educational attainment. For example, in Maine’s funding model, four-year universities receive additional funding for students who earn degrees in science, technology, engineering, math and nursing. In the state of Washington, community colleges receive additional funding for students who complete apprenticeship training programs. In Florida, wages earned by in-state graduates is factored into funding decisions. The Louisiana funding model allocates funding based, in part, on how well graduates perform on professional licensure and certification exams. By 2018 there were twenty-nine states that operated performance funding policies, with four more states in the process of developing a policy. ^xlvii

In 2016 the Hawaiʻi state legislature provided $6.3 million to UH to create a performance funding system. Six measures that aligned with the UH Strategic Directions were established and targeted goals were set. The targets included degrees awarded to Native Hawaiians, to Pell recipients, and in STEM fields, as well as targets for graduate rate and for inter-system transfers. For FY 2020, $2.49 million was earned by the campuses—well below the amount allocated.

B. Types of academic programs that should be established to meet changing national needs:

An analysis of data from the National Center for Educational Statistics, published by the Chronicle of Higher Education in The Looming Enrollment Crisis, produced the following charts that indicate academic programs at various levels that have been growing and declining in the period between 2010 and 2017. Although the particular program changes that are reported here may not be as applicable to changing manpower requirements in Hawaiʻi, they give an indication of national trends in academic program offerings.

Interestingly, six of the ten programs that are said to be expanding at the 2-year and 4-year levels are in health-related fields.

Figure 20: Which Programs are Expanding

These are the fastest growing programs since 2010-11
Certificates
	Net increase in programs
Welding technology	106
Emergency medical technology	84
Computer and information systems security/information assurance	74
Computer support specialist	73
Web page, digital/multimedia, and information-resources design	70
Associate degrees
Kinesiology and exercise science	79
Sociology	61
History	57
Health services/allied health/health science	56
Health information/medical-records technology	55
Bachelor's degrees
Kinesiology and exercise science	130
Multi/interdisciplinary studies	130
Registered nursing	130
Communication	117
Health/health-care administrration/management	112
Master's degrees
Organizational leadership	108
Business administration and management	94
Accounting	87
Educational leadership and administration	82
Mental-health counseling	82

Note: The figures represent net change, or the difference between two numbers: (A) unique institutions (for certificate and associate degree programs, two-year public colleges; for bachelor's and master's degree programs, four-year public and private nonprofit colleges) that report at least one completion for the given CIP code in 2010 or 2011 but zero in both 2016 and 2017 and (B) unique institutions that reported no completions for that CIP code in 2010 and 2011 but at least one in 2016 or 2017.

Source: Chronicle analysis of National Center for Education Statistics data

Figure 21: Which Programs are Dwindling

These are the fastest shrinking programs since 2010-11
Certificates
	Net decrease in programs
Humanities/Humanistic studies	97
Biological and physical sciences	90
Mathematics	83
Medical transcription	82
Art/Art studies	80
Associate degrees
Accounting technology and bookkeeping	66
Legal administrative assistant/secretary	48
Teacher assistant/aide	43
Executive assistant/executive secretary	41
Electrical, electronic, and communications-engineering technology	40
Bachelor's degrees
Speech communication and rhetoric	49
Computer and information sciences	47
Business teacher education	47
Rhetoric and composition	39
Management information systems	38
Master's degrees
Management information systems	23
Physical therapy	23
Computer and information sciences and support services	14
Public-administration and social-service professions	11
Public health/community nurse/nursing	11

The intriguing finding that programs in information technology seem to be on the decline at the bachelor’s and master’s levels may in fact suggest not that jobs are unavailable in these fields but rather that university programs in computer-related fields may not be preparing students for jobs in these areas. Two researchers at the Brookings Institution have identified a “skills mismatch” issue.

“The skills mismatch is particularly acute in fields like computer science where developments in real-world practice easily outpace academic curricula. By 2020, one million computer science- related jobs will go unfilled, and many computer science programs at universities are outdated. In the words of one college student attending its innovative tech program after taking computer science classes from the elite public university where he received a B.A., ‘My university courses taught me all about the theory of computer science, but I couldn’t actually code.’” ^xlviii

One suggested remedy for the “skills mismatch” between standard university programs and job requirements is the concept of “stackable credentials.” A growing number of colleges are allowing students to “test” degrees by taking certificate-earning courses that can eventually be “stacked” into a degree, thus lowering their risk. The academic credits that students earn can be reused — “stacked” — later in life to fulfill academic requirements of more advanced programs, including four-year bachelors’ degrees. Students can re-use the credits they earn.The “coding bootcamp” concept described above, offered in various formats by Trilogy Education and Lambda, suggests a pathway that some universities have taken in attempt to remedy this particular “skills mismatch.”

A new generalist digital-technology credential has been developed by an alliance of 12 universities and fourteen companies, members of Capital CoLAB, which has formed along a corridor between Baltimore and Richmond. The strength and credibility of this credential arises from the fact that its development began with strong employer buy-in. Once the criteria were determined by the group of employers, partner universities were given considerable autonomy in the ways in which they proceeded to develop the credential. It was offered as a “Fundamentals of Computing” certificate at Virginia Commonwealth University and as the equivalent of a minor at George Mason University. In addition to the generalist credential, CoLAB is planning to create three additional specialized certificates — in cybersecurity, data analytics, and AI and machine learning. ^xlix

Higher education institutions have been tailoring their offerings of academic programs to adjust to changing economic conditions. Several more examples of innovative programs are described in Appendix A-2. Programs in healthcare-related occupations (such as new programs as Johns Hopkins’s Nursing School and the interdisciplinary College of Health Solutions at Arizona State) are increasing. UH should further develop programs in cybersecurity (such as the innovative programs at Carnegie Mellon) in partnership with NSA and explore selective expansion of certificate programs, especially in IT fields (such as Stanford’s Graduate Certificate in Artificial Intelligence). The growing threats of global climate change have produced rising demand for graduates in fields such as renewable energy (pioneered at Oregon Institute of Technology) and sustainability (led by Michigan’s innovative School for Environment and Sustainability). Finally, even in established occupations in the hospitality industry, new technologies are demanding new training, such as the pioneering work in “smart tourism” at Central Florida’s Roche College of Hospitality Management.

The University of Washington has created a Continuum College, offering 99 certificate programs and 111 graduate-degree programs, which broadens the concept of continuing education and lifelong learning by focusing on workplace and career aspects and by adding fifteen enrollment coaches who counsel prospective students about achieving their educational and career goals. “A team at the university is also looking at efforts to change the way the credentials and certificates are tracked, so they can be both more flexible and more portable. A digital transcript could include degrees, certificates, and other credentials earned at various institutions and on the job.” Courses are offered in four different formats, including an online, on-demand version. ^l

On the whole, although more master’s degrees are awarded nationally than post-baccalaureate certificates, between 2002 and 2017 the number of certificates conferred has more than doubled, while master’s degrees have seen much smaller growth rates.

C. New and innovative ways colleges and universities can serve their communities:

Required or paid internship programs for students: Examples of community projects or of undergraduates working with high school students in summer programs can be found at Michigan State University and Utah Valley State University. A particularly strong program has been established at Vanderbilt University, under the label “Service learning or community engagement.” It features a teaching and learning strategy that “integrates meaningful community service with instruction and reflection to enrich the learning experience, teach civic responsibility, and strengthen communities. Students seek to achieve real objectives for the community and deeper understanding and skills for themselves.” The experience is typically incorporated into a course by way of a project that has both learning and community action goals. These can include one-time group service projects, options within a course, required units within a course, action research projects, disciplinary capstone projects, and multiple course projects.

Beginning in the 1980s, an expanding movement within higher education has been attempting to make universities more relevant and responsive to the communities and states in which they are located. At one level, more than eight hundred university presidents have signed the “Presidents' Declaration on the Civic Responsibility of Higher Education” committing themselves “to helping catalyze and lead a national movement to reinvigorate the public purposes and civic mission of higher education.” As the Declaration concludes, “We believe that now and through the next century, our institutions must be vital agents and architects of a flourishing democracy.” Additionally, 677 university presidents have signed the "Presidents' Climate Commitment" ensuring their universities’ dedication to slowing global warming.

At another level, several institutions have done pioneer community-building work. A much- cited example is the University of Pennsylvania, which has garnered much praise for its work in West Philadelphia. Portland State is a national leader in programs in community development and training to increase the capacity of community-based organizations. The University of Minnesota's Center for Democracy and Citizenship's “Community Information Corps” has launched an initiative to bridge the digital divide in St. Paul's West Side (largely immigrant) community. And many land grant institutions such as Penn State and Michigan State have launched broad efforts to re-emphasize outreach, while Oregon State became the first Research I institution to alter tenure rules to better reward community-based scholarly work.

EPICS is a unique program in which teams of undergraduates are designing, building, and deploying real systems to solve engineering-based problems for local community service and education organizations. EPICS was founded at Purdue University in Fall 1995 and has since spread to a diverse group of universities in the United States and abroad, as well as to a number of K-12 programs.

Community service agencies face a future in which they must take advantage of technology to improve, coordinate, account for, and deliver the services they provide. They need the help of people with strong technical backgrounds. Undergraduate students face a future in which they will need more than solid expertise in their discipline to succeed. They will be expected to work with people of many different backgrounds to identify and achieve goals. They need educational experiences that can help them broaden their skills. Programs like EPICS bring these two groups together in a mutually beneficial way.

D. Addressing unfunded needs for renewal and modernization of facilities and determining how this knowledge can be applied to University facilities:

Historically, cuts in spending on facilities are among the easiest to make in the short term when money is scarce. Philanthropy is not a good solution to long-term maintenance issues. Big donors can be coaxed to give money for new buildings, but they seldom want to make significant gifts to renovate old ones. No workarounds are in sight to pay for deferred maintenance. Public-private deals build new buildings but don’t fix up old ones. And every campus has an old building or two — or a dozen — with crumbling concrete or sagging ceilings or outdated infrastructure or all of the above.

In lieu of a comprehensive solution from the state, California’s College Futures report suggests several alternatives to make good use of precious space and resources. One alternative is joint ventures, such as the collaboration in the early 2000s between San Jose State University and the City of San Jose to fund and build a library on university property that serves both students and the public.

Another is public-private partnerships (P3), in which colleges enter into long-term contracts with private developers, many of whom take responsibility for funding and construction in exchange for long-term payments from the institutions. Such partnerships have become increasingly common in higher education, especially to build new housing, which enjoys a clear revenue stream. The deals, which free colleges from additional debt or fund-raising challenges, appeal to both small colleges and some large institutions. This year the University of Kentucky finished construction on a $450-million public-private project to expand its housing by nearly 7,000 beds.

“The emergence of the P3 option is happening where it matters most: projects that would be otherwise unattainable under the traditional public-improvement delivery models. For instance, 10 years ago, only a handful of higher education P3 projects were up and running; today, we are approaching three dozen such projects. The biggest challenge is, of course, the financing component, but P3 teams bring much more to the table than money — they give public entities access to expertise and innovation that can add significant value to projects at each phase of development.”

Several recent higher education P3 projects demonstrate how the P3 delivery model and team approach can enable colleges and universities to take on projects they might not have otherwise been able to pursue:

Wayne State University student residential facility. Wayne State sought out private partners for a project to demolish an existing 407-bed apartment building and replace it with new and renovated residential space. It went from issuing a request for proposals to obtaining financing in relatively record time and began leasing new beds in August 2018. To expedite construction, the private partner secured bridge financing as part of the overall capital stack, enabling the project to tap into generally favorable financing for the larger private placement of debt.

University of California, Merced, 2020 campus expansion. While residential projects have long been the focal point of higher education P3s, we are beginning to see more ambitious uses of the model. UC Merced 2020 is one example: a campus-wide expansion covering some 219 acres and almost two million square feet of new facilities. The $1.2 billion project is likely the largest and most comprehensive P3 in American higher education. The mix of uses features academic learning, administration, research, residential and utilities, among others. The project includes all project phases and employs an “availability” method of payment whereby the university will compensate a concessionaire directly according to a predetermined formula and schedule for the post-construction operations and maintenance of the facilities over a 39-year life cycle.

Colleges have long outsourced services such as food and laundry services, bookstores, custodial work and building construction. In recent years, however, those partnerships have expanded to include academics and other pieces of the student experience that traditionally have been closely held, including online education, recruitment, and even immersive learning experiences.

In a survey of 249 college executives by The Chronicle of Higher Education, the majority of respondents (83%) said their institutions are partnering more with private firms. While more than half (53%) are doing so on campus infrastructure projects, others are using them to outsource online programs (42%), student housing (39%) and predictive analytics (31%). Colleges are drawn to these companies primarily for their specialized skills, access to investment capital and the ability to quickly bring a project to market, respondents said. ^li

Other ways that universities are trying to stretch their funding for facilities involve finding ways to utilize buildings for multiple purposes. Design teams are being asked to design flexible buildings that can be used as classrooms now and faculty or staff offices in the future. A variety of health and wellness features are being integrated into student recreation centers. Libraries are becoming multimedia collaborative learning spaces; books are being archived and indexed for quick and easy retrieval by robotic arms, freeing up space for research space and for student collaboration. Such spaces, including student unions, that allow communal gathering and co- working are ways of responding to growing student demand for common and collaborative areas.

Finally, universities seek long-term savings by designing sustainable infrastructure that offers long term utility savings (e.g., use of rainwater harvesting to reduce water consumption and utility bills).

E. Emerging opportunities that can stimulate the local economy and create high-quality jobs for residents:

1. Workforce Developer

Colleges and universities are in the business of developing tomorrow’s workforce by educating students who graduate and assume public, private, and civic positions.

This role, however, can extend beyond conventional academic programs. Universities can develop executive and continuing education programs to serve regional clusters, and better align existing programs with those fields where there are local undergraduate and graduate hiring needs. Universities can conduct research on labor supply and demand, as well as workforce development best practices. They can enhance local job growth and economic development by facilitating partnerships among institutions, government, and industries in key regional clusters to identify and fill specific areas of need. In the Chicago area, for example, a collaboration of higher education institutions, community and industry organizations, and the mayor’s office has been working for nearly ten years to meet the shortage of manufacturing workers there by preparing Chicago’s inner-city residents for such jobs. Each partner contributes unique expertise to the effort.

The former Executive Vice Chancellor of Workforce and Digital Futures of California Community Colleges described an approach taken by a system of community colleges: “we prioritized which industry sectors drove each regional economy as a foundational decision for aligning programs with labor market needs. Based on this prioritization, Strong Workforce Program resources were made available to ensure ‘more and better’ career education. For example, advisors in the energy, construction and utility industry gathered and pinpointed the HVACR (heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration) Excellence credential as being most valued within the industry. At the time, there were also 1,261 job openings projected across the state, while supply from all our colleges was only 393. Faculty at our colleges that offered training in this area were invited to have their curriculum cross-walked against the competencies outlined in HVACR Excellence. Five accepted and found gaps. Faculty found a common basis for closing curriculum gaps and decided to work together on outreach and production to enlarge the talent pool.” ^lii

A workforce development project with high potential, already involving the University of Hawaiʻi , is the effort to expand the state’s cybertechnology industry, and especially its workforce in cybersecurity. A recent article in Civil Beat described the opportunities clustered around the National Security Agency’s operations center near Wahiawā. Employing more than 3500, one-quarter of who are civilians, the NSA center is in the process of becoming the neighbor of the Cyber Security and First Responder Tech Park, the “brainchild” of state Senator Donovan Dela Cruz. The Civil Beat article quotes Mike Janke, a business accelerator working on a similar project in Maryland, as saying that there is no reason Hawaiʻi cannot do what has been done elsewhere: “That means a robust technology ecosystem with professional services, access to capital, educational resources, and people willing to take the lead. Oftentimes all you need is a spark.” ^liii

2. Technology Transformer and Incubator

Rapid technological innovation and its commercialization are the hallmarks of modern economic competitiveness and growth. Universities have a crucial role in developing technology and catalyzing its commercialization. In Michael Porter’s view, “this is often best accomplished using a cluster model.” Business or industry clusters are geographic concentrations of interconnected suppliers, producers, and associated institutions in a particular field. Porter argues that companies in the cluster drive innovation and increase productivity, leading to a sustainable competitive advantage. Two world-famous clusters in California — Silicon Valley and Hollywood — are often cited as successful pioneers in “clustering.”

Universities can play a role by operating incubators. A bold new venture to build a “tech hub” from scratch has been launched in Portland, Maine, by Silicon Valley hedge fund executive David Roux in partnership with Boston’s Northeastern University. Roux’s $100 million gift is establishing a research institute in Portland which “could provide a template for the many American cities struggling to share in the nation’s prosperity.” ^liv

Through more than 150 incubators affiliated with colleges and universities across the country (70% of which are focused on technology companies), academia encourages aggressive commercialization of research and supports faculty business start-ups. In partnership with governments, community organizations, training centers, large established businesses, and venture capital firms, universities can help to offer valuable resources to incubator businesses—including, simply, space in which to do business. “The phenomenal growth of knowledge-based economies along Route 128 in Boston, in Silicon Valley in California, and in the Research Triangle in North Carolina is a testament to the power of these partnerships.” ^lv

At a time when companies are reducing spending on early-stage research and the government is allocating research funds less generously, innovative universities have been increasingly turning to corporations for long-term collaborative arrangements. Going beyond early-stage research to the stage of translating research into new products that produce economic growth, such deals have been occurring in research centers such as Boston and the North Carolina Research Triangle as well as in less prominent locations such as Cincinnati, Minneapolis and Phoenix. Companies co-fund PhD candidates or postdoctoral researchers and their scientists and engineers co-mentor promising researchers. Advance agreements on non-disclosure and patent licensing help bridge the “cultural divide” between academia and industry, and both benefit from long-term cooperation. As summed up by Boston University’s Dean of Engineering, “Companies will gain greater access to cutting-edge research and scientific talent at a time when corporate R&D budgets are increasingly under pressure. Universities will gain access to financial support and partners in research at a time when government funding is shrinking. Most importantly, society will benefit from a stream of previously unimaginable advances …” ^lvi

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