By William Hamilton
PBN Staff Writer
Lawmakers may soon be asked to grant the University of Rhode Island much more independence from the state – a move that a special commission says would help URI build its meager research and development capabilities.
The URI Commission for Research and Innovation also wants the school to seek a $100 million bond issue – possibly in November 2010 – that would, in part, enable URI to recruit 20 to 30 world-class researchers.
Those are some of the bold recommendations the commission made in a report last week to the R.I. Science and Technology Advisory Council (STAC) – recommendations designed to make URI a more competitive research school in order to help boost the local economy.
The Commission for Research and Innovation, a nine-member panel created through legislation in 2006 and made up of academics and business people, concluded in its 37-page study that URI lags far behind similar schools in the amount of annual research and development expenditures.
Commission members said URI has been hamstrung by its financial relationship with state, which collects revenues generated by the school and reallocates that money. URI officials have lamented that the state contribution to their operating budget has been dwindling for years.
With the state struggling to avoid budget deficits this year, aid to the state’s public colleges was cut even further. The commission noted that the state contribution is 11 percent of URI’s budget in fiscal 2009, down from 27 percent in 1994.
Another problem: “Bureaucratic issues,” said retired R.I. Supreme Court Justice Robert G. Flanders Jr., who chairs both the URI innovation panel and the R.I. Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education.
Often, URI must seek General Assembly approval to borrow money for infrastructure improvements, and it faces hiring constraints because URI employees are considered state employees, he explained.
Instead, Flanders said, the state should consider a structure in which URI is allowed to keep and invest revenues generated on its own and in which university workers are no longer state employees. The power to approve borrowing should also be shifted to the Board of Governors for Higher Education, he said.
“In short, it’s treating the school less like an agency of state government, and more like an independent quasi-public institution that it really is, particularly in this time of diminishing state funding,” Flanders said. “They need the flexibility to make the necessary investments.”
The commission also recommends that URI search for a new president who has experience building university-based research capacity. Current President Robert Carothers recently announced that he will be stepping down in June.
State officials and business leaders have long said that URI should be playing a key role in transforming the state from a manufacturing-based economy to one that is “knowledge based.”
In fact, Saul Kaplan, a URI innovation commission member and executive director of the R.I. Economic Development Corporation, cited a recent study by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities that found that, on average, 36 jobs are created for every $1 million of research and development expenditures.
“URI is key to our economic future,” Kaplan said. “We need it to be an economic engine and a job creator.”
Some steps have already been taken to improve the situation. Last year, URI formed a research foundation and hired Peter Alfonso as vice president of research and economic development to attract more research sponsors.
Still, Flanders said an “implementation committee” is already being formed to help push the commission’s recommendations forward. •
