Josh Marshall: Let's Remember Why There's a System of Federal Research Grants to Universities

[Nevilledog]

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/lets-remember-why-theres-a-system-of-federal-research-grants-to-universities

This is largely preaching to the choir. But it’s absent enough from the news coverage that is worth stating clearly. Most right-thinking people are aghast at Trump’s onslaught on higher education. The range of reasons is endlessly discussed and doesn’t need to be enumerated here. But through those discussions is the subtext that higher education is dependent on federal subsidies. There is some truth to this when it comes to Pell grants and backstopping student loans. But with grants to fund scientific research it turns the reality on its head. It’s the federal government which is the initiator here, both historically and also in terms of the on-going dynamic of grant-making.

It’s the federal government, significantly at the dawn of the country’s great power status, that decided that it wanted to fund a range different kinds of basica scientific research. Some of it was industrial and had economic development goals, some was cutting edge technology often focused on maintaining military superiority. Biomedical research had a mix of both aims and also focused on the general ideas of scientific and national progress so prevalent in the mid-late 20th century. Some of it was focused on what we’d now call soft power. The great power, certainly the great power center of the ‘free world’ had to be the place with the top scientists and knowledge.

Often the products of government-funded research paid off in unpredictable ways. The building blocks of the Internet emerged from the Pentagon’s DARPA program. But the trajectory in every case started with the federal government, which wanted certain kinds of scientific research done. A core strategic decision was made early on to outsource this work to independent, though often state-run universities. There was an obvious alternative, which was to build a big federal research institution that did everything in-house as it, were. Why that did not happen is a complicated story. There’s some of this at the National Institutes of Health, of course. But most of the funding is channeled through the domain knowledge banked within NIH to underwrite research at universities and academic medical centers.

Needless to say, as things have evolved, the universities aren’t complaining. The Harvards and UC Berkeleys and Wisconsins and Princetons have to a great extent remade themselves around this almost eighty year old federal partnership. They would not have become the world class institutions of higher learning they became without being the hosts to the research the federal government paid for. There is also big competition to land researchers who can bring in grants. The universities profit greatly, though not simply in narrowly economic terms. The more grants, the more attractive a place to do research, the higher levels of academic talent who can be brought to the university. The more top tier people, the more grants. It builds on itself. But that doesn’t change the fact that the process began with the needs and decisions of the federal government.

*snip*

[cachukis]

1. Where is it we are going? Forward, learning from

our mistakes, or backward to relive them?

[Prairie Gates]

2. This is an argument that mistakes historical analysis for contemporary economic analysis

Yes, of course the grants to fund university scientific research were initiated at great need and cost by the federal government. And, to be fair, Marshall is honest and upfront about how much universities came to value these grants. But the historical origins are not as important in the current situation as the actual dependence on grants by universities. Because the granting function has prevailed more or less unmolested by politics for decades, it's become an essential element of the economics of higher ed. PhD production and the size and scope of faculties and facilities all depend on grants. It's certainly true that any progress will still depend on these grants as well, but the Trumpies have identified a real point of economic leverage because the entire university system (and not just the big R1 schools) has integrated federal grants into its basic economic calculations and ecosystem. Cutting off that spigot has real effects, regardless of the historical origin of federal research grants.

[Solly Mack]

3. For Trump, it doesn't have to be actual research or real breakthroughs, it only has to be a talking point you can sell

to idiots to wrap themselves up in.

We're Number 1! The greatest nation on the planet! America! Exceptional!

The science, the arts, the ingenuity, diversity of thought and talent - none of that matters to them.

They've got the "good ole days" (that never were) to keep them going.