Investment in the fittest

Ten years ago in Maine, if you told the story of Vannevar Bush, the person primarily responsible for opening the purse of the federal government to the scientific creativity of the country’s universities, there would be uncomfortable disbelief, the sort of pause travelers experience when they realize they’ve just missed the last flight to the land of milk and honey or maybe Florida.

Bush, who was many things, including FDR’s director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (though not a relative of the presidents), wrote a paper in 1945 called “Science: The Endless Frontier.” It is still one of the best arguments for funding research and development at universities. He made the case that “without scientific progress no amount of achievement in other directions can insure our health, prosperity, and security as a nation in the modern world.”

He made this case when the nation was deeply in debt and had deep demands – from the war, of course, but also for roads and bridges, health care and education. He won, and the nation won an excellent system of higher education and subsequent advancements in medicine, engineering, telecommunications, the Internet. And it won the prosperity that came with these advancements, or much of it did.

While other states with land-grant universities caught on to this potential early on and put up funding to pursue federal contracts, Maine largely, though not entirely, took a pass. It had papermaking, after all, and potatoes and fishing.

In the ’90s, University of Maine scientists began pointing out – gently, repeatedly – the pennywise, pound-foolish state policy of relegating R&D to an occasional afterthought. Some politicians caught on immediately, some took longer, but within a couple of years enough wouldn’t have been at all surprised by the Vannevar Bush story. As UMaine’s R&D funding increased, the outside grants it won tripled, spin-off businesses went from four in 1996 to 22 in 2004; the number of patents rose; the statewide economic benefit, not surprisingly, more than doubled.

And then – nothing. The money leveled off; the forward motion stopped. Why? Well, the newness was gone and there were highway funds to fight over and tax breaks to hand out to dying industries and, well, you know how one thing leads to another …

It’s hard to overstate how sadly behind Maine is in research and development, not in the quality of work – the state has some world-class researchers at both public and private institutions – but in the amount of it. We’re last. Slice it just about any way you want and we’re 50th among states and falling farther behind. U.S. protectorates threaten to push us to 51st or 52nd.

UMaine, fortunately, is not waiting decades again to speak out about the loss of opportunity this represents, the kinds of jobs Maine won’t have five or 15 years from now. Instead its University Research Council has created a strong argument in the form of a strategy to get moving again. Aligned with the Baldacci administration’s vision of stimulating $1 billion in R&D economic activity by 2010 (it has the plan but not the money), the university has created its own role, worth what its researchers believe will be $212 million annually in four years.

It would do this in Darwinian fashion by focusing its efforts first through giving small grants to a hundred researchers to see what might emerge. Second it would reduce that number to 15 as the projects prove themselves, or fail to. Finally, it would reward only six, top-level integrated projects able to draw large outside grants. There is more to the strategy, especially in commercialization and technology transfer, but none of it happens without Maine looking back at what it has missed starting in 1945 and saying, “Not again.”

California has committed $3 billion to biotechnology over 10 years. Michigan has its eye on $2 billion for R&D over 10 years. Washington, $350 million in R&D over 10 years. Iowa, $500 million over 10 years. Mississippi, $200 million over 10 years. Or if that all seems too distant, since 2002 New Brunswick has been spending consistently on its 10-year “Progress to Prosperity” plan, including a significant increase in R&D.

You can see what these plans have in common: a big-money commitment and a decade’s worth of patience. That’s Maine competition – that, and the rest of the world.

To carry its share of the state 2010 plan, UMaine says it needs to build to $60 million a year in funding – the plan suggests $30 million in an annual bond and $30 million from general funds. It’s a substantial number and were the university to come close to getting it you can be sure other research organizations in Maine would want a piece too.

Where would the money come from? Bonds are one common answer. Here’s another, with the survival-of-the-fittest aspect of the university’s strategy: Maine will spend $420 million this year just in tax breaks to encourage economic development. If it is true that a lot more of this money would be more profitably spent on R&D – and that looks likely – this is an opportunity for legislators, the governor and would-be governors to invite R&D advocates to make like Vannevar Bush and present their case for why their programs best serve Maine and why they should be funded.

Let the natural selection begin.

Todd Benoit is the editorial page editor of the Bangor Daily News.