Should Universities Do Research?

20 September 2006 at 2:46 pm Peter G. Klein Leave a comment

| Peter Klein |

It is usually taken for granted that scientific research is a public good, is undersupplied by the market, and must therefore be provided by government. I think the argument for public funding is actually much weaker than is typically assumed. (More on that in a subsequent post.) Regardless of the funding source, however, what is the optimal delivery vehicle? Should universities be the main centers of scientific research?

For over two-thirds of the 370 year history of Harvard University, that institution was considered to be predominantly an undergraduate teaching institution. Only at the end of the 19th century did the German research university model find its way to the U.S., first at Johns Hopkins University, and then rapidly at other schools throughout the land.

There are other places at which research is performed, and the relative importance of these other research venues is substantial. . . . Yet universities have been considered the dominant provider of basic research — discovering new insights into the human condition and physical phenomena. In 2003, about 55 percent of basic research was university conducted.

The great advantage of university funded basic research is that there are sometimes economies of scale and cross-fertilization of ideas by having research conducted in a learning community where students mingle with faculty. The students transition to becoming mature researchers by assisting the senior researchers while studying. Yet there are other research models that work well — private firm research centers, government research labs, and in the social sciences, think tanks. More research is needed into the relative costs and benefits of these alternative forms of research delivery.

This is from Richard Vedder, whose blog offers excellent, provocative commentary on the problems facing contemporary higher education.