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to work on projects that prepare them for productive careers. Many graduates begin their professional careers with the companies they worked for while in school. Much of the research at the Lab is technical, but some of it is also directed to creating content for entertainment companies and educational businesses that provide opportunities for students in the arts and humanities. It is not difficult to imagine how Resnick’s work could be extended to secondary and even higher education. MIT’s Media Lab offers a model for productive collaboration between higher education and business. To prepare students to take advantage of such opportunities, of course, will require training undergraduate and graduate students differently and in many cases will make it necessary to change the academic workforce.

Finally, the most extensive and profitable collaboration between universities and business is technology transfer. The Association of University Technology Managers defines technology transfer as “the practice of licensing research institution–owned intellectual property to commercial and non-profit organizations.” This practice was made possible by the passage of the 1980 University and Small Business Patent Procedures Act, popularly known as the Bayh-Dole Act, which grants universities and nonprofits control over their intellectual property and inventions that result from research funded by the federal government. Under the terms of the agreement, universities can file for patent protection and are required actively to promote and commercialize inventions. Any income from inventions and intellectual property must be shared with the faculty members who created them.

Both universities and corporations were quick to recognize that this act changes the rules of the game. By the early 1990s, more than two hundred universities had established offices to market commercially viable products that faculty members created. In his book Universities in the Marketplace: The Commercialization of Higher Education, former Harvard president Derek Bok reports that by 2000, “many campuses had created centers5 to give technical assistance to small businesses or developed incubators offering seed money and advice to help entrepreneurs launch new enterprises. Several institutions formed special venture capital units to invest in companies founded by their professors.” Bok’s own university has been relatively slow to capitalize on this new source of income. From 2004 to 2007, Harvard made6 $15,881,129 on licensing and technology transfer. During the same period, Columbia University made $425,891,067. In 2007 alone Columbia’s licensing income was $137,632,417, which was roughly equivalent to the entire arts and sciences budget that year. Most of this income was generated by medical devices, software and especially pharmaceuticals.

While not all universities have been as aggressive as Columbia, the overall trend is clear. Financial pressures on colleges, universities and businesses will lead to even greater growth in this sector. When these collaborations are mutually beneficial, they should be encouraged. Such agreements must, however, be carefully monitored and managed. Administrators should keep faculty members informed, and there should be an oversight committee made up of a wide range of faculty members that regularly reviews the program as well as individual agreements.

Many faculty members see these changes as a threat to the very life of higher education; I see them as opening new possibilities for research, writing and teaching that will enrich individuals and institutions in more than financial ways. No college or university can solve its problems alone. The future of higher education depends on cultivating relationships within and beyond the walls of the academy and the boundaries of nations. In our increasingly globalized world, colleges and universities must work together to create a global education network that will benefit all people.

New Patent Filings and Invention Disclosures Received by American Universities, 1991–2007

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