A New Direction for Research Universities

In “It’s Time for Universities to Redesign Their 75-Year-Old Contract” (Issues, Summer 2025), Michael M. Crow, William B. Dabars, and David V. Rosowsky describe what they see as the failure of US research universities to fulfill the social aspects of the compact laid out by Vannevar Bush. In fact, universities did not come hat in hand asking for a handout. Many leaders were skeptical about the design, which would place universities much closer to federal control.

The historian Richard Hofstadter observed decades ago that Americans have had an ambivalent relationship with the intellectual. They admire them—the Einsteins, the Watsons and Cricks—and yet often distrust elites, particularly those at highly prestigious houses of intellect. In 1919, the economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen anointed the trustees and presidents of the nation’s emerging research universities as “captains of erudition.” Distrust has only grown since, and once embedded in the culture, it is hard to undo.

Universities have failed to reverse this distrust, perhaps in part because they have failed to deal with the expanding needs of society. The authors’ critique is correct. We have a fixation on a few, truly distinguished, private research universities that advertise themselves as elite. The very universities with the most prestige, that have produced pathbreaking research and innovation, are also the ones observers find the most in need of change. There is a place, perhaps, for universities that think and behave as if they are an oasis. But that won’t meet the needs of our larger society. Entering undergraduate students at the Ivy Plus universities may total perhaps 50,000 of the more than 1 million new students entering college each year. But they will not fulfill society’s needs and the responsibility of public and private institutions—or what President Lincoln and others envisioned in passing the Morrill Act to create land-grant colleges.

When Benjamin Franklin founded the University of Pennsylvania and the American Philosophical Society, he called for the pursuit of useful knowledge. Today, Arizona State University, the authors’ home base, has developed a new design for research universities, more in keeping with Franklin’s idea. It has demonstrated that you can teach students at levels of quality that equal or surpass supposedly elite institutions. And it is doing so at scale.

Finally, universities must not eschew advertising our accomplishments. We need to create focused stories about, for example, the people who have experienced cures and treatments for disease because of our researchers’ discoveries, and go on to forge new technological or scientific creations that protect the nation and change lives. This effort should target highly specific audiences—and not left to halftimes at football games. What we produce needs distribution. It is one way for us to begin to regain the trust of many of the skeptics.

Jonathan R. Cole

Michael M. Crow, William B. Dabars, and David V. Rosowsky begin their essay with reference to a signal event: President Truman signing a bill into law establishing the National Science Foundation in 1950. In responding to the authors’ compelling call for research universities to redesign their 75-year-old contract with the American public, I recommend that we also look to Truman’s successor in the White House, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and specifically his farewell address to the nation.

On January 17, 1961, Eisenhower delivered a nationally televised speech as he prepared to leave office. The most famous line in that speech is Eisenhower’s caution about the “military-industrial complex.” Less well known, but more salient today, is a second danger Eisenhower identified in his remarks: “In holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

A distinguished panel of scholars, convened by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in January 2011, on the 50th anniversary of the farewell speech, revisited this warning to discern Eisenhower’s meaning. Here, as my small contribution to redesigning research universities’ contract with the American public, I propose an “Eisenhower Dialogue” to reassess this warning in today’s context and explore how we can ensure public policy does not become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

For this Eisenhower Dialogue, I envision a symposium focused like a laser beam on interpreting the second warning in the president’s farewell address and its implications for research universities today. This dialogue would include scholars of higher education and public policy, as well as organizations including AAAS, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, the American Council on Education, the Association of American Universities, and the National Academies.

I believe there is valuable synergy between academe and government at the state and federal levels, so the National Conference of State Legislatures, the Council of State Governments, and the National Governors Association, as well as representatives from the Trump administration and federal agencies, should be invited. And any discussion along these lines would be woefully incomplete without involvement of the private sector, both business and philanthropy, and their proven ability to “move the needle” through investment and entrepreneurism.

Eisenhower was president of Columbia University before being elected US president. Milton, his younger brother and close adviser, was president of Kansas State, Penn State (both land-grant research universities), and Johns Hopkins. Both brothers’ executive experiences surely shaped Dwight’s farewell address in 1961. How? And what from Milton Eisenhower’s leadership, especially at the land-grant universities, can inform our current situation?

President Eisenhower’s admonition about a scientific-technological elite has cast a shadow over American science, research, and education for more than 60 years. Let us use his words to illuminate a new direction for research universities and their essential relationships with government, business, and the American people.

E. Gordon Gee

It is indeed time to redesign the social contract between universities and the public and to address its design flaws, as Michael M. Crow, William B. Dabars, and David V. Rosowsky write. That twentieth-century contract between science and American society argued for public funds for basic research on the grounds that such research would be an eventual source of public goods (once applied properly), but the tacit agreement also freed scientists, when pursuing basic research, from the responsibility to think about such eventual social impact.

Scientists pursuing basic research did not have societal responsibilities other than the pursuit of truth (wherever that may lead). Freedom in science in part meant freedom from concerning oneself with societal impact. Additional moral obligations accrued over time (e.g., to treat human and animal subjects ethically, to meet biosafety requirements), but still, directly pursuing societal impact was not thought to be the job of the basic science researcher. And most academic scientists considered themselves basic research scientists (as did research statistics compiled by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, an international body that tracks such things.) Promissory notes of societal benefit might be part of every grant proposal, but no one would later check to see if such benefits occurred. Thus, it is not that American universities have been slow “to work towards equitable social outcomes benefitting all Americans,” to use the authors’ phrasing. Rather, when considering the basic research enterprise, it was not their job to concern themselves with such things.

The grounds of societal responsibility in science have since shifted. A rising awareness of the pervasive possibility of producing dual use research and growing awareness of harmful impacts of some scientific endeavors now mean that all scientists need to think about the possible societal impact of their work. And rightly so. But what this shift means for academic researchers and the institutions that support them has not yet been well developed.

Supporting scientists to help them do groundbreaking research that clearly serves societal goods has been an ongoing experiment at the authors’ home institution, Arizona State University—one in which universities across the country can engage. What kinds of funding structures enable academics to do work that supports their local communities? How can community-engaged research, which takes longer to build, be properly supported institutionally? How can scientists engage across disciplines to imagine the possible ways in which their research can serve both disciplinary goals (which are important for long-term knowledge building) and societal goods? And, perhaps most important, where can researchers go for help when they recognize potentially harmful implications of their work?

A new social contract should be about more than making a university education accessible (which is crucial) and involve more than the usual university hype about incoming grants. Genuine support for pursuing societal impact (well beyond hosting tech transfer and intellectual property offices, which do not necessarily serve public goods) is needed. But such support cannot dictate the direction of academic research. Academia must remain the cacophonous space essential for research embracing both freedom and responsibility together.

Heather Douglas

I am a fan of Arizona State University. Over the past two decades, it has risen from sleepy stupor to energized wakefulness. The awakening has included enrollment growth, online education, technology investment, breaking down of silos, and aggressive hiring. Having said that, I do not believe that all the elements of ASU’s model are a good idea for all research universities, as Michael M. Crow, William B. Dabars, and David V. Rosowsky seemingly suggest in their call for a change in universities’ contract with society.

Their call is built on the statement that Vannevar Bush’s policy of 75 years ago in Science, the Endless Frontier had “design flaws,” resulting in inadequate “social outcomes … for research universities,” and on what they see as universities’ failure to “innovate … to meet the changing needs of society.” I agree that change is needed, but argue that Endless Frontier isn’t the problem, and remains the best articulation of the imperative of research for national security, economic development, and social good. We are the ones flawed.

Drivers of change for universities have included changing demographics; the changing nature of work; new technology; the increasing cost of attendance; the need to show social and economic value; and the erosion of public trust. I would add the spread of artificial intelligence; the furious pace of knowledge creation; and political interference. The ASU model, as described by Crow et al., addresses the first four drivers. For the fifth (social and economic value), they call for institutions to “pursue coordinated campaigns that promote universities as critical institutions that help America compete.” The problem is that research universities do not speak with one voice. Every university officer first worries about their institution to the detriment of others. Related is the fact that the loss in reputation of academic institutions is not the same as respect for research, which the public holds in higher regard. We must understand public opinion better.

What Crow et al. do not discuss is political interference in the business of academia. That is the elephant in the room that is forcing change. We would not be having this conversation if the Trump administration had not embarked on a frontal attack on academia. The difference between now and the past 75 years is that during those previous decades the federal government worked with us. Now the federal government works against us. The fact is that academic institutions have been responding to the drivers of change; and we should do more at a faster pace. But changing under duress, while being falsely accused of issues unrelated to the drivers of change, is not only difficult but ill advised.

Research in higher education has served the nation very well—and the public knows it. We must work together to change the conversation and the narrative being controlled for political gain. Research universities should change to deal with the real issues. But they should reject attempts to control the sector based on trumped up charges.

Rafael L. Bras

Seven of the top 10 universities in the world are located in the United States, according to the Times Higher Education ranking for 2025. The United States scores even higher on another metric: Eight of the top 10 companies in the world today, measured by market capitalization, are American. Even more impressive, the top six are US companies—and all are in the technology sector.

Those of us who work in universities point to our long success in catalyzing innovation, launching careers, saving lives through medical therapies, and ensuring national security. But though important, these contributions do not prove that universities today are doing their best.

My research over the past five years, since stepping down as vice president of research at the University of Southern California, has focused on how universities innovate and change. I was motivated by observing an erosion of higher education’s stature relative to industry, as the large companies that define the technology sector had seized the public’s imagination.

In the period after the Civil War, American universities were very innovative. Spurred by the Morrill Land-Grant Act and imaginative leaders, new universities started up and old colleges evolved, incorporating research, doctoral education, professional schools, and academic freedoms for students and faculty. So important was this era that all the nation’s top-ranked universities were established by 1920.

Industry is different. On average, the top-ranked US companies are just 27 years old. They are unrecognizable from those that dominated American industry a century ago, companies engaged in food processing, energy, steel fabrication, and other physical pursuits. Today, the top companies do not excel in the physical world as much as in the world of information—creating the backbone through which knowledge is created, archived, shared, and applied.

The public is not oblivious to the impact and pace of tech companies that grow quickly from start-ups to transformative enterprises. Though universities have contributed to the success of tech, they are not exemplars for expediting change for themselves. Compared with universities around the world, the United States is doing great. Compared to industry, universities lag.

As Michael M. Crow, William B. Dabars, and David V. Rosowsky illustrate in their essay, Arizona State University has shown how universities can become more innovative. They should adopt learning to improve as strategy, not just for students but for faculty, staff, board members, and community leaders. This means catalyzing innovation inside their campuses with the same energy as they promote innovation and economic development on the outside.

University leaders should start by earning trust, both on the inside with your stakeholders and on the outside with the public. Show that you can lead in a technology-altered future. Live out the values you espouse through the moral clarity of the actions you take. Be agile, responsive, and self-reflective while building on strengths of objectivity, openness, and independent thinking.

Most of all be innovative in all that you do, because institutions that are stuck in the twentieth century cannot succeed when the outside world is rapidly changing.

Randolph Hall

We agree with Michael M. Crow, William B. Dabars, and David V. Rosowsky that it is time for universities to accelerate the improvement of their 75-year-old contract with society. Vannevar Bush’s original vision has led universities to amazing advances in innovation. But the world has changed. And so must universities, if they are to continue helping society solve its thorniest problems.

Building on the authors’ arguments, one clear opportunity is a particular research category known as Highly Integrative Basic and Responsive (HIBAR) research. HIBAR projects are the subset of use-directed basic research projects co-led by both academic researchers and societal experts. This co-leadership can generate important discoveries all along the continuum from invention to larger scale production to adoption and utilization. The goal of true co-leadership is indeed a “high bar,” and Arizona State University, as a leading participant in the HIBAR Research Alliance (HRA), provides a flagship example. The HRA is a coalition of individuals and institutions dedicated to helping universities make the strategic and cultural changes necessary to reduce institutional barriers to HIBAR research.

Organizational changes of this type are exactly what Crow, Dabars, and Rosowsky are calling for. Making these changes will help universities fulfill the social dimensions of their contract with society. Fortunately, history has shown that this also advances the intellectual mission of great universities. In other words, by enabling cross-sectoral collaboration early in the research process, at the problem-definition stage, HIBAR projects generate basic academic advances while also solving critical societal problems. This builds responsiveness to society into the core research activity of the university, improving both academic work and its usefulness.

We have observed that both cultural and organizational shifts are vital to ensuring that the next generation of early-career researchers, who are committed to addressing societal challenges, are properly encouraged and well supported. Subordinating the social portion of the contract hinders innovation by prioritizing academic insularity over scientific advances that are needed to solve pressing societal issues. In contrast, by fostering an environment that values socially impactful, co-led research, academic institutions can better align themselves with the public good, unleashing the full innovative capacity of the next generation to fulfill the contract.

These cultural and organizational changes require targeted attention. To that end, the HIBAR Research Alliance is currently developing the HIBAR Strategies Collection to offer compelling ways to bolster HIBAR-style research co-leadership. As a start, there are roughly a dozen preliminary actionable examples, focusing on topics such as tenure and promotion reform, educational process, cross-sectoral collaboration, community building, and program assessment. We fully believe change is possible, and necessary for our collective future. Continued effort and action are critical to achieve it.

Gretchen B. Jordan, Michele Mossman, Wesley Patrick, Lyle H. Schwartz, Marc-David L. Seidel, and Lorne Whitehead