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Week 5: Research Research defines the character and the quality of research universities. Even when institutions teach thousands of undergraduate students, the quality of their faculty and the breadth and depth of their programs--graduate or undergraduate--depend on the research enterprise. This does not mean that the undergraduate program exists subordinate to research activities, only that the quality of university research drives the quality, breadth, and depth of undergraduate academic resources. The common mantra of almost all major universities speaks to teaching and research in the same breath, as if they were similar things, but they are not. Teaching and research are different things, use related but different talents, address different audiences, and focus on the academic enterprise in different ways. Research seeks the unknown and pursues knowledge at the boundaries of our current understanding. Teaching provides the known and delivers the state of current knowledge. Research, by virtue of the expertise required for reaching beyond what we know, tends to focus narrowly and deeply. Teaching, by virtue of delivering what we already know, focuses more broadly and generally. More important for understanding the university, teaching talent is more common than research talent. This realization engenders tremendous unhappiness on the part of all of us who teach. We teachers want to believe that what we do requires the rarest of talents. Teaching, while a difficult and demanding activity requiring intelligence and understanding, rests on a talent found widely among academics. The talent capable of sustaining quality research productivity for many years, occurs less frequently, is more fragile, and demands a higher level of institutional management and support. Research is both labor and materials intensive, requiring not only the best talent available in the world, but also libraries, laboratories, equipment, computers, assistants, and other elements that support the creativity of the faculty researcher (or creative artist in the cases of the fine and performing arts and some humanities). Because research talent is scarce, it is expensive. Because it is fragile, it may not last for an academic lifetime. Research productivity of talented faculty may continue for as long as 40 years or for as short as 5 or 10. The longevity of a highly productive faculty research career depends on many things: intelligence, inspiration, determination, opportunity, funding, creativity, and luck. Hard work is required, but alone it does not guarantee that a research program will produce good results. If the creativity and inspiration misfire, all the hard work in the world will not produce a significant research result. Research is also among the most competitive enterprises in America. Research scholars, whatever their field, compete for the money that supports their work and for the recognition of the quality and significance of the work that they do. Even a poet, whose work requires little money and no elaborate infrastructure, nonetheless must compete to publish in good places. Poets must compete with all the other poets for recognition of the quality and significance of their poetry. If a poet fails to win that recognition, and peers and critics find the poems lacking originality, insight, or distinction, then the poet's creative work fails. This is the peer review to which all researchers must submit, either for the support of grant agencies whose funds make the research possible or for the publication opportunity that permits colleagues in the field world-wide to review the research or creative results. Every element of a research design and product receive critical review, and our critics quickly find any defects in design or results. Quality researchers who have substantial success over time command high salaries and significant funding from their universities. They exist in a competitive marketplace where institutions will bid for their services and drive up their price. Research, being the leading product of the university and the source of all that we eventually teach, enjoys first rank in American research universities. Even the high quality liberal arts college, most dedicated to a teaching mission, will encourage, support, and highlight the research accomplishments of its faculty. Managing research within a large university takes special attention. These enterprises require funding, space, equipment, libraries, and technical support. They generate special legal and management issues. Research, because of its high value to the university and to society, attracts public attention. Universities compete on the amount of research they do, for the funds required to support this research, and where possible the opportunity to commercialize its results. Research is a national and international enterprise, drawing the attention and interest of experts and the general public around the world. Teaching is of local importance to an institution because it affects only one institution's students. Teaching, if it is spectacularly good, will be good only for those students taught locally. Research, if it is very good, will change the way the world works, it will affect the teaching and research of faculty and students everywhere, it will attract the attention of governments and industries, and it will bring great opportunities and risks to the institution. Given this importance, universities create special offices to fund, promote, regulate, monitor, and manage the research activity of their faculty. They identify and attract funding and manage the physical needs of research. They protect the faculty and guide them in meeting endless regulatory requirements. They ensure that the value of the intellectual property created by research is commercialized properly for the benefit of the university, the state, and the faculty member. Issues of science, humanities, social sciences, and the arts involve state and national and sometimes international policy and practice. Research universities maintain alliances and engagements with political and policy actors to ensure that the interests of university research receive appropriate attention and proper government support. As the previous discussion on ranking research universities made clear, nations see the power of the research university as the base for their national aspirations. Research, is a resource-intensive enterprise and derives its funding from many sources. Most universities spend the majority of their institutional resources on teaching and expect the faculty to generate much of the cost of research from grants and contracts. For example, mid level public research university might spend about $160 million on research. Of that amount, some $95 million would come from grants and contracts from external revenue from state, federal, and private sources. The remaining $65 million comes from state general appropriations, student tuition and fees, endowment earnings, and other income. While teaching dollars come in regularly and predictably based on relatively stable enrollments with their attendant state and federal support and tuition dollars, research support requires constant and successful competition in the marketplace to earn the revenue from contracts and grants necessary for the survival of the research enterprise. In the competition for external research support, universities find that they need to invest more and more of the funds generated from other sources to support the successful competition for external funding. As mentioned earlier, research income from grants and contracts never covers the full cost of performing the research. While universities receive indirect costs that to help cover the overhead of heat, light, library, computing, and other infrastructure, most universities are fortunate if they recover half the audited, actual indirect costs. The balance comes from the institutions' general funds (whether from state, tuition, or endowment and gifts) and allows the institution to increase the scale of their research activity. The more research the current university's faculty accomplishes the better the institution will compete for the highest quality new faculty and the largest share of research grants. But even at the highest performing research universities, the external funding does not pay the full cost of research. For the major private and public research universities, nothing matters more that the successful management of this difficult but critical element of its enterprise. Research is hard to do, difficult to sustain, and essential to the institution's identity and success.
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