In Letter To Congress, Corporate Leaders Call Campus Science Crucial To Progress

CEOs underscore the commercial sector's reliance on academia's basic discoveries andtrained investigators DIFFERENT IN KIND: Increasingly, university research is company-backed, but most is direct-output work, says Batelle's Douglas E Olesen. In a recent letter to more than 300 members of Congress, the heads of 15 of the largest United States corporations argued for continued "robust" federal support of university-based research. Among those receiving the letter were presidential hopeful and Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole (R-Kan.), House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), and the chairmen of the major science- and budget-related committees. The action by the chief executives reflects the commercial sector's growing dependence on universities for fundamental scientific advances and for the trained scientists needed to staff company labs, according to top industry science officers and academic officials. In light of this reliance, industry perceives a profound threat to its interests in the sharp budget cuts being pushed forward by the Republican leadership in Washington. "The letter is a reflection of the worry," says William H. Danforth, chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis. "Nobody really knows how serious the threat is, but there's certainly a lot of concern in academia and with our industrial friends." A persistent question, however, is whether the increasing symbiosis between industry and academia may be undermining the independence of the universities. Industry officials insist, however, that it is actually in their companies' best interests that academia continue its twin missions of pursuing unfettered basic science and education. It is to that end, they say, that they are encouraging the government to continue in its dominant funding role. Delivered to members of Congress on March 13, the letter represents the joining of several efforts that had been under discussion among industry leaders, according to John Hocker, an assistant to William F. Ballhaus, Jr., vice president of science and engineering at Lockheed Martin Corp., Bethesda, Md. Lockheed Martin's new president, Norman R. Augustine, signed the letter while he was still chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of Martin Marietta Corp., Bethesda. Republican leaders have yet to respond to the letter, Hocker reports, and the CEOs plan to pursue their agenda in a number of ways, including, for example, visiting with elected officials on Capitol Hill. Although the Republicans have voiced strong support for basic science in their rhetoric, they have also committed themselves to an accelerated deficit-reduction program that many fear will require wide-ranging funding reductions including cuts to university research support. And there are indications that such concerns may have substance. In March, for example, House budget committee chairman John R. Kasich (R-Ohio) released a list of "illustrative" savings that includes a 5 percent cut to funding for the National Institutes of Health in 1996 with flat funding thereafter through the end of the century. Rep. Robert Walker (R-Pa.), chairman of the House science committee, has suggested that university researchers look to industry to recoup likely reductions in federal support. In many respects, the CEOs' letter echoes and reaffirms venerable notions about the special role of academic research expressed as long ago as 1945 in Science The Endless Frontier (reprinted 1990, Washington, D.C., National Science Foundation), the still-influential report written by President Franklin Roosevelt's Office of Scientific Research and Development director Vannevar Bush. "Publicly and privately supported colleges and universities and the endowed research institutes must furnish both the new scientific knowledge and the trained research workers," Bush wrote. "These institutions are uniquely qualified by tradition and by their special characteristics to carry on basic research.... It is chiefly in these institutions that scientists may work in an atmosphere which is relatively free from the adverse pressure of convention, prejudice, or commercial necessity." Addressing the scientific needs of industry, he added: "The simplest and most effective way in which the Government can strengthen industrial research is to support basic research and to develop scientific talent." "The universities must remain captains of their own futures," says P. Roy Vagelos, recently retired as chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Merck and Co. Inc., Whitehouse Station, N.J. He is now chairman of the University of Pennsylvania's board of trustees and chairman of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc., Tarrytown, N.Y., and one of the organizers of the industry lobbying effort. "Those people who are pressing that universities do more applied research are going in the wrong direction. The universities prefer to do pure basic research, and that is what they're good at, that's where they're most efficient. And that is something that industry does to a very small degree and, so, is dependent on universities for. "University scientists and industry scientists are getting closer, simply because they're working in the same science, following up similar ideas and collaborating, in many instances. And I see more of that in the future. But I don't believe that industry would ever be in a position to substitute for the enormous support that government gives to universities." Indeed, while industry and academic officials say that corporate involvement in university research has grown in recent decades, they insist that even a large increase in this funding would be insufficient to make up for a substantial shortfall in federal support. In the end, they contend, any solution to the problem of support for university research will have to come from the federal government. "A federal investment is almost irreplaceable,"observes Herbert Pardes, vice president for health sciences and dean of the faculty of medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. "There's no other way to get that kind of money. It may be that the rate of growth will not be as rapid as we might like, so that universities will try to find ways of getting foundations, pharmaceutical companies, and philanthropies to augment federal funding. But we cannot, and should not, replace the $11 billion of NIH funding [for example]. That's impossible." Without adequate federal funding for university science, industry would suffer and, eventually, so would society, according to Joseph A. Miller, Jr., senior vice president for research and development at E.I. DuPont de Nemours and Co., Wilmington, Del. DuPont chairman and CEO Edgar S. Woolard, Jr. signed the letter. "Since people are being educated, trained, and developed [in the universities] in the process of conducting basic research, the quality of our science, engineering, and mathematical forces would decline dramatically," Miller declares. "And we'd obviously stop pushing the frontiers of nature. As we stopped pushing those frontiers, the ability to generate new ideas for ultimate technological development would dry up. Our competitive position in many of our important industries would decline, and our ability to prosper as a nation, societally, would decline." As a component of funding for university science, industrial support has grown over the past two decades, as has the support provided by the academic institutions to their own scientists, from their endowments and other sources. The federal government's share of support for campus science has fallen substantially. According to NSF's most recently published figures, in Science & Engineering Indicators_1993 (Washington, D.C., National Science Board, 1993), the percentage of support for academic research and development provided by industry has climbed steadily since 1970, from 2.6 percent in 1970 to 7.3 percent in 1993. Over the same period, however, the percentage of support university research has received from the federal government has fallen from 70.5 percent to 55.5 percent. Academic institutions' contribution to university research has risen from 10.4 percent to 20.2 percent over that time (see graphs on page 6). Douglas E. Olesen, president and CEO of the independent, nonprofit Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, which produces an annual assessment of research and development in the U.S., notes that industry has been progressively outsourcing its research needs to universities and other types of organizations, a trend he expects to continue. Recent industrial support for university research, however, has a less fundamental and more applied character than was true in the past, he maintains. "Outsourcing is growing," Olesen says. "But, historically, industrial support to universities had a much larger basic, general-support nature to it. The more recent movement is much more towards shorter-term, very focused, directed-output research. So, more of it is growing in that area than in the basic sciences. Even though industry says it wants students and basic research from universities, more and more of their funding is going, actually, to the shorter-term science." Industry has been driven back from longer-term research goals, Olesen contends, by the intensely competitive economic environment in which they operate. At the same time, as the federal budget tightens, universities are finding their own resources squeezed, he notes. The result is that the funds available for basic science are reduced. "They get it from both sides," Olesen observes. "There is a fundamental problem growing of universities getting the right kind of support and being able to maintain the right kind of focus to keep their education mission intact while keeping their finances intact, also." He credits industry leaders with "seeing all these pressures for funding that the universities are trying to deal with," and with having "a genuine concern about a continuing supply of well-educated staff members." The letter to Congress demonstrates these concerns, he says. Some academic leaders maintain that the nature and independence of university research are not likely to be undermined by the current shifts in resources. In fact, they say, the fundamental science role played by the universities is more crucial to industry than ever before. The following letter was delivered on March 13 to Senate Majority Leader Sen. Robert Dole (R-Kan.), House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), and more than 300 other members of Congress. Dear [Member of Congress]: We are writing as concerned industry executives to urge your continued support of a robust federally supported university research program. We recognize you face some tough choices as you deliberate and ultimately decide which federal programs merit continued support. We understand that priorities must be established. We strongly recommend, however, that you maintain a high priority on supporting the research efforts being carried out in our universities. As you well know, America's leadership position in an ever-increasing globally competitive economy has been fueled by our technological prowess. Our universities, and the research programs pursued therein, have played a pivotal role in continually advancing our technical knowledge and know-how. Further, they have produced the scientists and engineers who have provided the brainpower that allows American businesses and industry to operate and compete with nations and cultures throughout the world. The standard of living we enjoy today has, in large part, been made possible by our ingenuity and creativeness and our ability to continually advance and apply technology. Our message is simple. Our university system and its research programs play a central and critical role in advancing our state of knowledge. Without adequate federal support, university research efforts will quickly erode. American industry will then cease to have access to the basic technologies and well-educated scientists and engineers that have served American interests so well. We, therefore, respectfully request that you maintain support for a vibrant, forward-looking university-based research program. [Signed,] W. Wayne Allen Chairman and CEO Phillips Petroleum Co. [Bartlesville, Okla.] Norman R. Augustine Chairman and CEO Martin Marietta Corp. [Bethesda, Md.] John L. Clendenin Chairman and CEO BellSouth Corp. [Atlanta] Robert J. Eaton Chairman and CEO Chrysler Corp. [Highland Park, Mich.] George M.C. Fisher Chairman, President, and CEO Eastman Kodak Co. [Rochester, N.Y.] Louis V. Gerstner Jr. Chairman and CEO IBM Corp. [Armonk, N.Y.] Joseph T. Gorman Chairman and CEO TRW Inc. [Cleveland] Gerald Greenwald Chairman and CEO United Airlines [Elk Grove Township, Ill.] George H. Heilmeier President and CEO Bellcore [Livingston, N.J.] Jerry R. Junkins Chairman, President, and CEO Texas Instruments Inc. [Dallas] John McDonnell Chairman McDonnell Douglas Corp. [St. Louis] Randall L. Tobias Chairman and CEO Eli Lilly and Co. [Indianapolis] P. Roy Vagelos Former Chairman and CEO Merck and Co. Inc. [Whitehouse Station, N.J.] John F. Welch Chairman and CEO General Electric Co. [Fairfield, Conn.] Edgar S. Woolard Jr. Chairman and CEO E.I. DuPont de Nemours and Co. [Wilmington, Del.] Point of contact: W.F. Ballhaus, Jr., vice president of science and engineering, Lockheed Martin Corp.,6801 Rockledge Dr., MS 155, Bethesda, Md. 20817; (301) 897-6867. Fax: (301) 897-6647 NO THREAT: Even if industry research funding on campuses wree to double, academic independence would remain secure, syas Princeton's Harold Shapiro. "Right now, the figures show that about 7 percent of academic R&D is directly sponsored by corporations," remarks Harold Shapiro, president of Princeton University. He was vice chairman, in 1992, of the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST), which produced Renewing the Promise: Research-Intensive Universities and the Nation (Washington, D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, 1992). "Suppose that were to double - which I don't think anyone is really contemplating - that still wouldn't represent any very serious threat in my judgment. What's actually happening is that corporations are changing their own R&D profile, so you see a much better division of labor. That is, they're doing less basic research and want the universities to do more, as they're trying to make choices that sustain their own competitive positions. "It's not in anyone's interests for one side to subvert the other or for one side to distort the other. Everybody's interests lie in pretty much the same direction. It's important for industry to have an independent source of ideas that marches to a somewhat different drummer_not a totally different drummer, but a somewhat different one. That's too big an advantage for industry to give up, and I don't think they have any interest in that." "We don't do development," says Charles Kruger, dean of research at Stanford University, where technology licensing brought in $31.2 million in fiscal year 1993, easily topping all other single universities, according to the Association of University Technology Managers, Norwalk, Conn. "We do basic and applied research that is of long-term interest to industry. And we and other universities don't undertake that in a way that permits a conflict of interest. We have to, and always will, place a very high value on academic principles, such as the freedom to publish. And people in industry that I've talked with respect the importance of doing that." "A reasonable amount of interplay with industry is actually good for academia, because it puts them in touch with, let's say, real life," argues Gabriel Schmergel, president and CEO of Genetics Institute Inc. in Cambridge, Mass. The company has several hundred collaborations with university researchers, according to Schmergel. "But when you look at the research-based university, I don't know what the right number is [for industrial support]_is it 10 percent? Is it 15 percent? It's never going to be much more than that." Biotechnology and pharmaceutical company executives insist that, while some commercially linked research on campuses is good for both parties, they have no interest in turning universities into de facto research and development labs for industry. Historically, the current system has served industry's needs very well, they contend. "The biotech industry as we know it today would not exist if there had not been decades of funding by the NIH," says Schmergel. "If you look at Europe or Japan, we are at least five years ahead in biotechnology. It may be more than five years, and it's because there was this generous funding in the past in the basic hard sciences. That's why things happened here, as opposed to in Germany or France or Japan_even the most advanced countries. "The basic science was here, and it did not exist to the same degree abroad. And the science continues to evolve. This is far from a mature science. Some things have become mature_my college-age daughter can clone and express [genes] and do things that our superstars were doing 15 years ago. But now advances in genomics and rational drug design, just to name two examples, are at the forefront." Vannevar Bush's 50-year-old ideas that university-based basic research leads, in a nonspecific way, to technological advances and that universities supply the trained scientists that industry relies upon represent a durable paradigm, according to Robert M. Bell, vice president of research for Glaxo Inc., Research Triangle Park, N.C. "It's just like motherhood and apple pie," Bell explains. "It's something that's so strongly held that we rarely talk about it anymore." According to Bell, who joined Glaxo in January after more than two decades in academia, most recently as chairman of the department of molecular cancer biology at Duke University Medical Center, there are misconceptions about what it is that industry actually gets from university-based scientists. While most of the fundamental ideas that the pharmaceutical industry is exploiting today have their roots in basic research done in the academic laboratories some years ago, very few of these were presented to the pharmaceutical industry as anything like immediately useful entities. What is true, he says, is that industry is entirely reliant on the university system for the highly trained researchers it needs for the eight to 10 years of in-house work necessary to develop a novel molecule into a drug that is both safe and pharmacologically effective. And it is in this area that Bell worries about the effects of constraints in federal support for academic research. "We have a whole generation of scientists who are under pressures that their predecessors hadn't seen to obtain sufficient funding to build their research programs and to survive in this fiercely competitive environment," Bells points out. "If we're going to maintain our international competitiveness and continue to position our country based on technology and innovation, we have to make these investments into the present scientists that are building their programs. Otherwise, we could lose an entire generation of scientists here. It would be like losing the seed corn." Vagelos, too, is concerned that cuts in government funding for university science or even widespread talk of cuts_could have ramifications for the next generation of scientists. "The thing I fear is that this constant talk in the Congress and the administration about reductions reaches graduate students," says Vagelos. "Graduate students are very sensitive to their future being jeopardized. I'm just afraid, with constant talk about reduced funding from the NIH and NSF, that students will turn away from science and engineering. And that will be bad for this country." "What we would like to see come out of Washington is what's best for the nation," stresses Danforth at Washington University, which has a longstanding research partnership with Monsanto Co. in St. Louis. "While politics is [often] about whose ox is being gored, eventually successful politics is about what's best for the nation. And it really is in the long-term interests of the people of the United States to have strong universities and strong academic science. And I think these people in industry [who signed the letter] think the same thing."

In Letter To Congress, Corporate Leaders Call Campus Science Crucial To Progress

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