Originally published on December 3, 2014
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When the new Congress is sworn in come January, it should
add two important items for the agenda concerning higher education – both of
which have a direct impact on U.S. competitiveness and technological
preeminence.
Higher education has become highly regulated. It’s at the
point that teaching students and conducting research is a secondary occupation
for educators. Responding to government reporting requirements is fighting for
primacy — and winning.
At the same time, federal cuts to scientific research are
having a major impact on campuses around the country. The next generation of
U.S. researchers is abandoning research for other fields of endeavor because
federal funds, which had underwritten many campus laboratories and researchers
for so many years, are in retreat.
That’s why the top two goals of the new Senate when it comes
to higher education should be these:
First, cut regulations. Almost 50 percent of the cost of
performing research at a higher education institution is devoted to regulatory
and compliance activities. The National Science Foundation’s National Science
Board found that “the administrative workload placed on federally funded
researchers at U.S. institutions is interfering with the conduct of science in
a form and to an extent substantially out of proportion to the well-justified
need to ensure accountability, transparency and safety.”
And that’s just the scientific research portion of higher
education.
The Chronicle of Higher Education documented the plight of
Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y. Margaret L. Drugovich, president of Hartwick,
tallied up all the school’s compliance activities in a year. What she found
highlights the make-work and associated costs universities and colleges now
must dedicate to government-mandated rules and regulations.
She found that 100 employees and six contractors spent 7,200
hours responding to more than 60 federal, state, and local government agencies
and other groups. The cost was about $300,000 for Hartwick to comply with 247
rules over just one year.
Now extrapolate that across the country and over several
years and the true cost of the problem begins to emerge. Congress needs to take
an axe, not a scalpel, to these regulations encumbering higher education.
Second, reverse research spending cuts. Federal research and
development spending at universities is under fire, a predicament that has
stark implications for the nation, for our economy, for our ability to solve
human kind’s most pressing problems.
Federal biomedical research funds have declined by 25
percent in real dollars over the last decade. The National Institutes of Health
NIH, the world’s largest source of medical research funding, is approving about
half as many proposals as before. “Federal funding cuts–especially as a result
of sequestration–jeopardize the groundbreaking research taking place at
institutions around the country,” says the Association of American Medical
Colleges.
The federal investment in science and technology has led to
the U.S. assuming a leadership role in the world in a relatively short period
of time. U.S. industries depend on universities to provide them much of the
early knowledge, and even proof of commercial value, of a given technology. One
can make the economic argument that the aggregate investment in
university-conducted research is of equal value, if not greater, than industry
research.
Of course, there are additional pressing issues regarding
higher education that Congress should examine. But if these two major problems
can be solved, then others will fall away.