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STATUS OF THE ENTERPRISE. 4 Status of the Enterprise. The concept that scholarship and advanced research training should be conducted jointly in institutions of higher learning has been a major tenet of most leading U.S. universities for more than a century. This tenet, imported with significant modifications from the great European universities, not only promotes a university-based model for the development of new knowledge, but also stimulates faculty to gain the forefront in contemporary science. As a result, this dual emphasis on new knowledge and pedagogy has established a unique inter-dependence between educationâincluding advanced research trainingâand research in the United States; universities educate new generations of teachers, researchers, and other professionals, as well as produce fundamental knowledge for science and social, economic, and cultural development. Figure 1-1: Leading U.S. Research Universities Based on the Number of Distinguished Faculty, 1906* By the end of the 19th Century, about 15 U.S. colleges and universities had undergraduate enrollments of sufficient size to organize their faculties into specialized departments (Figure 1-1). From the beginning, external funding was critical for university-based research but generally limited to small endowments and government appropriations for agricultural experiment stations.2 After World War One and throughout the 1920s, the academic research enterprise grew significantly through two sources: Increased numbers of faculty due to rising undergraduate enrollments (Figure 1-2), and the emergence of external sponsors for
STATUS OF THE ENTERPRISE. 5 research. These sponsors were, principally, philanthropic foundations, which awarded block grants to major private universities, and industries, which underwrote programmatic grants in their areas of commercial interest. Direct federal support remained small. Much of the private funding, however, was short-lived. The Great Depression of the 1930s significantly reduced private sector support, and academic research entered a decade of doldrums that did not end until the onset of World War Two. Figure 1-2: Growth of U.S. Higher Education and Major Socioeconomic Influences, 1900â1988* The Second World War was a turning point. Academic scientists greatly assisted the national government during the war and, with the war's end, national policy-makers perceived a direct link between the seminal role basic research had played in ending the hostilities and the need to develop creative solutions to major social problems.3 After the war, federal policy-makers acted to put in place an enterprise that could direct the contributions of research to national needs. They made two historic decisions that fundamentally re-shaped the academic research enterprise: First, the federal government assumed primary responsibility for the quality and quantity of basic research in the United States and, second, the government identified the universities as the primary locus for the increased basic research activity. The first decision, in effect, established university reliance on the federal government for financial support. In 1960, the President's Science Advisory Committee explained the rationale for this decision:
