The January 11th Wall Street Journal article “Who’s holding up the Ivory Tower?” might be a fitting pop quiz question. Appropriate participation roles and priorities from academia are hot topics. Meaningful contributions from higher ed can earn incompletes and failing grades when personal philosophies dominate.
Pure Green Cement, L3C, can’t be alone in feeling irony that a Harvard professor, Harvey C. Mansfield, penned this timely article. This distinguished author, with a six-decade career, does raise important questions, and his writing doesn’t reek of CHAT GPT or require source verification. Even so, PGC, L3C endeavors to block their ears to much of the dogmatic noise that comes from academia. The screech of fervent societal and political advocacy is often divisive and can distract and delay the utility of the abundant intellectual capital residing in university research.
Herbert Spencer may have nailed it when he stated, “The great aim of education is not knowledge but action”. We take that to also extend to academic research. External stakeholders that provide significant funding to this higher ed function, are continually embracing this view.
For example, Private Foundations are increasingly directing and monitoring their gifts to higher ed research in ways that will target and achieve quantifiable impact. Even the normally self-serving corporate funding of applied research is becoming more altruistic.
Most importantly, government agencies such as the National Science Foundation have been a driving force in paving a path for academic innovation to reach commercialization. As we have reported in our past writings: Sethuraman Panchanathan, the head of NSF, has prioritized this mission. NSF’s TIP Directorate has recognized some of the hurdles facing academic research on the road to market and has initiated several programs and pilots to facilitate the trip.