Profit not a priority for college research

TOOLS OF THE TRADE: Gerald Cohen, left, international trade specialist for the Chafee Center for International Business at Bryant University, and Raymond W. Fogarty, director of Chafee Center for International Business. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS
TOOLS OF THE TRADE: Gerald Cohen, left, international trade specialist for the Chafee Center for International Business at Bryant University, and Raymond W. Fogarty, director of Chafee Center for International Business. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS

Paying a couple of thousand dollars for a student-run research study at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth can be a good deal – but not just for the business client.
It also produces a revenue stream that, while not generating a profit, covers the costs associated with educating students at the school’s Center for Marketing Research and providing the local business community with surveys it might not otherwise be able to afford, said Nora Ganim Barnes, the center’s director and chancellor professor of marketing.
“The impetus is twofold,” Barnes said. “In the Fall River/New Bedford area, businesses have been hit hard and you want to help them if you can. At the same time, we have students who need job opportunities. … If you can provide a product that had commercial value of between $15,000 and $20,000, and you could do it for $4,500, it would seem everybody wins.”
Like UMass Dartmouth, specialized research centers at Bryant University and the University of Rhode Island charge for research that students participate in, though the extent of student involvement varies depending on the center. And while UMass Dartmouth puts any surplus revenue toward scholarships, Bryant and URI run break-even operations – but with a similar motivation: to partner with the business community and provide students with real-world business experience.
David Slutz, president and CEO of Precix, a New Bedford manufacturer of sealing products for automotive fuel and brake lines, has done a survey every year for the past 12 years with UMass Dartmouth. As a member of the center’s advisory board, he only pays $2,500, he said. What’s more, professional survey response rates are lower than what he gets with the UMass study.
“We use the kids, and we get better results,” Slutz said. “It costs me less money. The kids get great experience. I stay compliant with my certification body. It’s a trifecta.”
Bryant’s Chafee Center for International Business is a nonprofit. About 40 students are paid for their research work. A couple of hundred others do academic research that is unpaid. All told, close to 300 students a year, mostly from Bryant, but also from other schools, participate, said Raymond Fogarty, the center’s director. “What we do it for is really the return on investment for curriculum, for student experience and for Ph.D. [candidate] research, so they get experiential knowledge of companies,” Fogarty said. “That is our payback. It’s not in dollars.”
The Chafee Center does several types of research, Fogarty said.
“We work to increase exports, do economic studies, business and cost-related analytics – and not just to sell abroad but to lower the costs so companies are more competitive – and we also do specialized research,” he said.
Individual research projects for a business may cost anywhere from $2,500 to $7,500, while an economic study might cost $20,000. A unique, three-phase project called Manufacturers’ 2,500, which involves building a database of the state’s manufacturers, so far cost $60,000 in a first phase and $40,000 for the second phase, he said.
Also known as the RI Manufacturers Renaissance Project, the undertaking involves interns from Bryant, URI and other colleges, with funding coming from The Rhode Island Foundation, said Bill McCourt, executive director of the Rhode Island Manufacturers Association.
“The value is tremendous,” McCourt said, “mainly because of the organization they can provide. What they bring is a level of expertise and service, and also the ability to gather the information and oversee the process. The Chafee Center oversees the interns on a daily basis.”
At URI’s Center for Sensors and Instrumentation Research, two pieces of equipment valued at more than $1 million must be maintained, and charging for research using that equipment helps cover the cost of maintenance, which is pricey, said Michael Platek, the center’s electrical-materials research engineer.
One student who works 20 hours a week assists with the research for a Perkin Elmer 5500 multitechnique surface analyzer that cost $700,000. It analyzes coating and materials on products as diverse as textiles or sprinkler-system solders. The charge is $134 an hour and URI has about five regular businesses as clients, Platek said, including Toray Plastics (America) Inc. of North Kingstown and FM Global Insurance, which has offices in Johnston. Research with a $250,000 scanning electron microscope runs about $163 an hour, and the R.I. State Crime Laboratory is a client that may pay for gunshot residue analysis, for example, Platek said.
Repairs to these two pieces of equipment can cost thousands of dollars, he said.
“The college doesn’t have that type of money lying around, so the best way to cover that was to have these cost centers,” he said. “It’s a very nice way to have state-of-the-art equipment that doesn’t cost the university [much] money, if any, to maintain.”
Whereas generating revenue was conceived as a way to pay for URI’s state-of-the-art equipment, that idea was never central to UMass Dartmouth’s program, Barnes said. The program for undergraduates does generate money, but it covers phone-survey costs, travel, student payroll and research, with money left over going into a scholarship fund.
“This school has always been dedicated to experiences with students,” she said. Making money “is a secondary benefit.”
The undergraduate teams at UMass Dartmouth do all the legwork confidentially, including reaching out to the client, drafting surveys, conducting phone interviews, collecting data, analyzing it, writing a lengthy report and presenting it to the client at a dinner at the end of class, Barnes said.
Because attrition is a concern for every university, the work at the center has proven itself as a way to keep students engaged, she said.
“We are the marketing-research student-engagement program,” Barnes said. “That’s more descriptive of who we are and what we do. The more ways students are connected to the university, the more likely they are to stay and do well. They’re connected to a real-world project, are connected to the business community and a student team.” At Bryant’s Chafee Center, the diversity of work engages students, Ph.D. candidates, faculty and a small staff, Fogarty said.
“We have specialized Ph.D.s who are experts in their field in areas such as supply-chain management economic studies, and health care,” he said. “In doing a lot of this research for the benefit of the community, we’re also bringing relevant business practices into the curriculum.”
For example, representatives of companies that are selling more product internationally or are doing this within the global supply-chain-management area will come in as guest lecturers, he said.
So far, administrators at these schools have not considered these centers as revenue-generating streams to support the schools, and center directors don’t think that’s likely, though it may be possible in the future.
“I have undergraduates providing the work, so I’m never going to be getting the fees that I would get, for example, if I were providing the work myself,” Barnes said.
URI’s Platek likewise concedes that higher-priced commercial charges would not be appropriate.
Clients “don’t get all the bells and whistles you’d get with a private company, but the companies that come back on a regular basis really like the services we provide,” he said.
Fogarty, however, believes there may be more money to be made at the Chafee Center, even though it’s run as a “break-even proposition, subsidized by the universities.” That’s because when it comes to the export business in particular, and the type of trade missions and trade shows that the center can do, there’s the potential to get back $40 for every $1 invested, he said.
“I would run four trade missions instead of two this year, but we don’t have the money to do that,” he said. “We’re stretched. [But] the economic payback is much bigger than the investment, so it’s really perplexing why the state doesn’t make a bigger investment.” •

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