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Dr. Saul Fenster on Education and Economic Development
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Education and Economic Development Forging A Synergistic Relationship By James T. Prior, Editor-in-Chief, New Jersey Business, November 2001
Dr. Saul K. Fenster was recently named by the acting governor to co-chair New Jersey's new Task Force on Creating a World Class University Infrastructure. Here's an excerpt of a conversation with Dr. Fenster and James T. Prior , Editor-in-Chief of New Jersey Business:
A world class university infrastructure is needed in New Jersey for it to be competitive on the economic world stage, says Dr. Saul Fenster, president of NJIT, which awards about 1,900 degrees annually and supports research for commercial and public policy applications. This infrastructure is a cluster of intellectual resources, educational services, research centers, laboratories and buildings that are respected around the globe. Fenster is fighting to make New Jersey an internationally known and recognized cluster.
"This infrastructure attracts support from government and industry, is a magnet for New Jersey students and attracts the finest faculty to engage in cutting-edge research-the underpinning of new industries and new jobs," says Fenster. "A world class university infrastructure works cooperatively with established businesses to provide the highest quality of research. It also attracts entrepreneurs who wish to be associated with faculty, students and facilities.
But, he cautions, New Jersey's performance in research capacity and its integration with commercial enterprise is mixed, revealing that a strong historical base in research and development (R&D) is losing ground quickly to other high-tech states.
He points out that other states are doing more. In California, for example, the state funded $400 million over four years, creating four multidisciplinary, multi-university California Institutes for Science and Innovation. Georgia invested $1 billion in new university construction and tripled its annual funding for renovation and repair. Michigan created a $1billion "life science corridor" initiative to make four state research universities among the nation's most important in the development of biotechnology applications. North Carolina State University expanded its engineering campus with a 1,500-acre contribution. "The list goes on," he adds.
New Jersey's total university R&D funding from industry was only $27 million in 1998, placing the state 16th among the 20 high-tech benchmark states. Fenster says the top 10 states have universities that attract between two and nine times the industry R&D funding that New Jersey universities attract.
What should New Jersey do? Fenster says there must be publicly stimulated investment in the concept of regional developments and the establishment of clusters of innovation in which the technological research universities play a key role. Other efforts include incorporating engineering and technology in the K-12 curriculum and increasing the participation of research universities in the K-12 curriculum, in pre-college education and in training of teachers. A major goal is to build a world class research university infrastructure as part of a world-class economy matrix.
"We have to build an international reputation that New Jersey is the place in which you want to learn, research, invest and live," he points out. "New Jersey has to get the message out that there is venture capital here, as well as high-tech workers and research universities that are business oriented. We need to develop a comprehensive plan of what needs to be done to increase the level of investment to a competitive height. We need to develop a stronger sense of reality of what our competition is doing."
"Our economic platform here in New Jersey is the world," says Fenster . "We must advance the productive relationship of industry, government and research universities."
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