Association of American Universities 1200 New York Ave., NW, Suite 550, Washington, DC 20005 (202) 408-7500 ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES The Association of American Universities (AAU), representing 61 leading public and private research universities, would like to thank the Office of Science and Technology Po

 The federal regulation of research has become excessively burdensome, argue staff members from AAU and COGR in an article in Issues in Science and Technology.  Increasing regulatory and reporting requirements should be replaced by new and more timely and flexible mechanisms for universities and associations to work with federal officials. 

 AAU issues a statement in support of President Obama's new Advanced Manufacturing Partnership Initiative. 

 http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/adv_man_press_release_final.pdf 

 A letter drafted by the Department of Commerce National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entreprenuership (NACIE) and signed by university presidents, AAU, and APLU committing them to develop strategies to aid in regional and national economic growth.

 A group of five higher education associations, including AAU, submitted comments to the Department of Commerce on April 1 regarding the Administration's Strategy for American Innovation. 

 President Berdahl's remarks to the National Science Board on the National Research Council's Study on Research Universities and how the university-government research partnership can be strengthened.

 An AAU, APLU, and COGR report submitted to the National Research Council panel that is studying the future of the research university which lays out recommendations for reforming regulatory and compliance costs of university-based research. 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Barry Toiv December 1, 2010 202-408-7500, barry_toiv@aau.edu AAU PRAISES BOWLES-SIMPSON FISCAL REPORT The Association of American Universities (AAU), an association that includes 61 leading public and private U.S. research universities, today praised the report issued by the National Comm

 AAU provides a number of recommendations to the NRC panel studying the future of U.S. research universities.

"AAU’s mission is to advance basic research and higher education, particularly graduate education. These are two critical areas of investment for America’s future, as they produce the ideas and people essential to innovation – the foundation of economic growth, improved health, and strengthened national and homeland security.."

On behalf of research universities, affiliated research institutions, medical colleges, and the higher education community represented by our five associations, we appreciate the opportunity to comment on the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the National Economic Council (NEC) March 26, 2010 Federal Register request for information (RFI) issued concerning the commercialization of university technology and proof of concept centers (POCCs). Our associations believe strongly that university research and education benefit society at large. Therefore, supporting and enhancing technology commercialization is essential to universities’ public mission and their societal responsibility. At the same time, increased commercialization must not come at the expense of our universities’ primary education, research, and public service missions..

To a degree none of us has witnessed in our lifetimes, our nation’s research universities are in a period of both feast and famine. There is a veritable feast of existing areas of research, many of which address pressing national needs, which are ripe for transformative breakthroughs. I think of areas like stem cell research, with the potential to cure Parkinson’s disease and injury-induced paralysis, maybe even Alzheimer’s; personalized medicine, enabled by the human genome project; alternative sources of energy that could make the U.S. energy-independent; particle physics, which is on the verge of answering existential questions about the origins of the universe; neuroscience and its ability to understand and correct cognitive deficiencies…and on and on the list goes. The coming decade has the potential to be an unprecedented era of discovery on fundamental questions many of us thought could not be answered in our lifetimes..

I’m here to urge you to focus on the challenges facing the nation’s research universities. I believe these challenges – including the disinvestment of states in public higher education, the sharp drop in university endowment, and the strategic investments in research universities being made by other nations imitating our success – threaten not only the primacy of U.S. research universities but also the unique research partnership established between these universities and the federal government a half-century ago..

As the National Academies undertake the charge to "assess the organizational, intellectual, and financial capacity of public and private American research universities relative to research universities internationally," given by Senators Alexander and Mikulski and Congressmen Gordon and Hall, it is perhaps useful to begin with the document that has framed the partnership of the federal government and research universities since the end of the Second World War: Vannevar Bush’s report, Science The Endless Frontier. Bush’s seminal report outlined the role for the federal government in the support of basic research to ensure the nation’s health, security, and economic and industrial growth. He insisted that the major investment in research should be channeled through the nation’s universities, where free, curiosity-driven research flourished and where the nation’s scientific talent could be educated. The research capacity of our universities, he argued was essential to the future..

In this array of colleges and universities, the role of research universities is unique, for it is at these institutions, more than at any other, that the faculty is engaged in the research and scholarship that inform and broaden the basis of knowledge taught at all institutions. Thus, the work of research universities enriches teaching and learning at all institutions, creating path-breaking scholarship that expands students’ ability to grapple with the most current and pressing issues. Research universities also provide the advanced education for those who become faculty and educate students at all institutions..

It is this theme – sustaining our major public research universities – that I want to talk about with you today, for I believe they are essential to the future of the nation. Unlike the sense of crisis that brought about a consensus for public investment in research and university expansion in the decade of the 1960s after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, I believe today we confront a competitive threat significantly more challenging than Sputnik, but the slower, less dramatic, the incremental nature of the threat makes it difficult to build a consensus for a response. This is true for many reasons..

As a nation, we are the best in the world at invention and scientific exploration. We are the very icons of risk-taking, social progress and economic success. At the University of Michigan alone, our scientists have discovered the genes for cystic fibrosis and Huntington’s disease, and our alumni are responsible for the iPod and Google. But we have a problem. Many of you here have seen the latest studies and publicized their ominous findings. The best minds in our country – business leaders like Norm Augustine of Lockheed Martin and Rick Wagoner of GM, university presidents like Shirley Tilghman of Princeton and John Hennessy of Stanford – are profoundly concerned that we are at risk as a nation if we do not commit to more innovation, more math and science, and more basic research..

And yet, at a point in time when science, technology and engineering are opening all these incredible potentials the United States is falling behind in the production of graduates in these fields. Indeed, if current trends continue, by 2010, only four years from now, more than 90 percent of all scientists and engineers in the world will live in Asia. This is technology a deficit. It is being called a "gathering storm." Just as people on our Gulf Coast must prepare for a gathering hurricane before it makes landfall we must address this technology deficit before it is too late.  And the force for strengthening our nation in this gathering storm lies in education..

The role of research universities in underpinning our nation’s standard of living is of pivotal importance, both as a source of talent and as a source of fundamental knowledge. And speaking as a resident of our nation’s capital—which admittedly has, on occasion, been described as a “diamond-shaped city surrounded on all four sides by reality”—I have concluded that this contribution of academia is under-appreciated by many who bear responsibility for funding the very research of which I speak. Too often it is taken for granted that our universities will more or less automatically continue to generate the breakthroughs that have fueled our economy for many years..