More 'Bang' for the Research Bucks

Some of the results from a recent Commerce Department meeting with university officials, it seems likely that research campuses will be doing a lot of planning soon, if they are not already, around improving the institution's long tail revenue growth and economic impact resulting from commercial applications of campus-based research. And work also needs to be done on ways of measuring more than just revenue dollars as a gauge of the impact of research. From Goldie Blumenstyk at The Chronicle of Higher Education:

"We're probably not maximizing the output," said Lee T. Todd Jr, president of the University of Kentucky. (He noted that Kentucky is now using a grant to pay two employees to work as "harvesters" of new invention ideas by scouring university labs for ideas that might have commercial potential.)

Mr. Todd and others said it was also important to develop new ways of measuring the effectiveness of commercialization, to include factors like how many new jobs are created and how much investment do the ideas draw. "They're trackable," he said. Organizations like the Association of University Technology Managers track gauges like patents awarded and licenses issued, but don't go so far as to try to assess job creation. A number of other organizations have recently begun to look at those broader approaches.

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA

Land-Rich Universities Weigh New Options for Real-Estate Development

A new report from Moody's Investment is described in this article by Paul Fain. May require subscription or day pass for access. The report describes a number of ways in which campuses with substantive real estate can maintain control and ownership of the real estate which engaging in partnerships that can create revenue streams from the use of the land. The report is titled "Public-Private Partnerships in U.S. Higher Education: Real-Estate Rich Organizations May Benefit, but Credit Impact Always Assessed on Case-by-Case Basis," and can be obtained by request at higher.education@moodys.com.

Canadian 4-Year Institutions' Revenues Down Compared to US Counterparts

According to a new report from the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, Canadian (PDF) 4-year institutions have fallen behind their US counterparts in gross revenue-per-student terms.

In spite of welcome government investments in postsecondary education in recent years, revenues per student in the general operating budgets at Canadian universities are much lower than at American public universities.

The latest volume of Trends in higher education, released today by the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada shows overall revenues to support teaching and research per student at Canadian universities have fallen significantly since the 1980s and have remained virtually unchanged since 2000. Canadian universities had $2,000 per student more than their U.S. public peers in 1980-81 and now have $8,000 less per student to fund teaching and research. Canadian universities also have less per student than U.K universities.