Writing in Science, JHU President Ron Daniels describes how the historical partnership between research universities and the federal government has ensured the nation’s scientific preeminence

The transformation of the United States’ research enterprise into a driver of American economic prosperity, health and longevity, and military preeminence is one of the country’s great achievements of the post–World War II period. Often overlooked, however, is the reimagining of the American university in the late 19th century that laid the foundation for this remarkable system of discovery and innovation. Beginning with the founding of Johns Hopkins University 150 years ago, the American university evolved in this era from an undergraduate college devoted primarily to educating citizens into an engine for the creation of knowledge—later propelled by the federal investment in competitive, merit-based research funding. The imperative now is to strengthen the system where needed without discarding the distinctively American ideals that have made it so powerful.

America’s founders prized knowledge and innovation, even writing the promotion of science into the US Constitution (1). They were also committed to a foundational role for universities in the new republic, seeing an educated citizenry as critical for self-government and economic and social development. Yet despite their belief in progress as an American ideal, it was not until 1876 that advanced graduate education and rigorous research became defining features of the landscape of American higher education (2).

Merchant Johns Hopkins bequeathed $7 million—at the time, the largest philanthropic gift in US history—to create a university and a hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. With only modest guidance from its benefactor on the form that the university should take, the institution’s first president, Daniel Coit Gilman, had considerable latitude in developing its character. Gilman envisioned something entirely new in the US: a research university inspired by the German model and adapted to the American context, fusing original research and graduate education to the undergraduate college. This may sound obvious today, given the ubiquity of this model and its impact, but it was a radical concept for a nation whose universities at the time were primarily focused on the moral education of young gentlemen (3, 4).

In the decades that followed its founding, Johns Hopkins University explored novel fields of study, created new doctoral programs, and launched field-defining journals. It pioneered laboratory medicine and the modern teaching hospital. It built the foundations of modern public health and unleashed countless scientific breakthroughs. Other universities soon adopted the Hopkins model, yielding a rich mosaic of research universities across the nation.

This network of advanced research universities allowed engineer and administrator Vannevar Bush to draw on the expertise of its professors while leading the Office of Scientific Research and Development, the US federal government agency charged with fostering the development of innovative technologies that would assist the Allied effort during World War II. Instead of seconding faculty to a handful of government-operated research facilities, Bush mostly allowed the thousands of scientists recruited to advance war-related research to remain at their home institutions. Consequently, the nation would be the beneficiary of the expertise not only of the scientists whom the agency funded, but of the intellectual communities in which they were embedded. As it became clear that this expansive scientific network was a major part of the success of the American war effort, Bush secured support for the continuing relevance of this distributed model in peacetime (5, 6).

At the core of the system that would emerge were several audacious ideas. First, the federal government would assume lead financial responsibility for solving the problem of private underinvestment in basic research, owing to its character as a public good. Second, instead of distributing the majority of funds to a limited number of established research institutions, the government—through intermediary agencies—would allocate funds on a competitive basis to individual researchers to support discrete projects they would propose. This reliance on funding to individuals, rather than institutions, differed from the dominant European model. Third, and most important, the system would be deliberately designed to insulate the selection of scientific projects from political influence or bureaucratic fiat. Its lodestar would be scientific merit as determined by the views of thousands of established scientists who would volunteer their time and expertise to the grant-awarding agencies.

As the system evolved, one additional—perhaps unanticipated—benefit was the degree to which the model would inspire further investment in research and development by an array of private actors. Universities would come to coinvest in laboratories, equipment, and technology to lure leading-edge scientists to their institutions. Private foundations and philanthropy would make major investments in researchers with high-risk ideas, with the knowledge that early success would well position those researchers to compete for further federal funding. States would coinvest in their research ecosystems to attract talent and strengthen their workforces and innovation economies. And finally, private companies would partner with scientists in the system to bring the most promising ideas to market—and scientists would launch their own start-ups in turn.

The capabilities and contributions of America’s research universities blossomed with this federal investment (7). For instance, at Johns Hopkins, the pre–World War II era had been punctuated by a series of financial crises that intermittently threatened its very survival. But the availability of merit-based federal grant support provided a much more stable platform for its growth and contributions. The institution deepened its expertise in the ever-evolving frontiers of science—in areas such as cancer immunology and human genetics, physics and space exploration, and neuroscience and epidemiology. The university’s faculty understood that without the institutional resources enjoyed by many of its better endowed peers, the only reliable way to discharge its research mission was to earn and re-earn support from the federal government based on the strength and novelty of their ideas (4).

The impact of the partnership between the federal government and America’s research universities is borne out by the evidence. Whether measured by the long-standing dominance of America’s innovation-oriented industries or by the gap in productive capacity between America and major industrialized democracies, it is clear that the research and the skilled graduates produced by US research universities, with foundational support from the federal government, have served as a major driver (8–10). The same is true for so many of the technologies that have ensured American military preeminence. Economists estimate that government-supported nondefense research since World War II has generated a return on investment of 150 to 300% to the American economy (11). During this same period, far more Nobel laureates in the sciences were affiliated with institutions in the United States than any other country in the world—and the overwhelming majority of those institutions have been research universities (12).

Even accounting for its profound success, the American research partnership is not without scope for improvement. Concerns about the pace of innovation, replicability of science, opportunities for young investigators, and the openness to considered dissent—these are all legitimate questions for US citizens to ask of the scientific enterprise that they have supported so generously. These are also questions that research universities should, and indeed do, ask of themselves.

Although there are unquestionably ways in which the system can be strengthened, it is imperative not to lose sight of the success of a model that has justifiably been the envy of the world and that has inspired so much emulation. The recent and very marked slowing and reduction of federal research funding and, worse yet, the proposed shift away from merit-based, peer-reviewed science, runs the risk of gravely damaging the American research enterprise—at a moment when scientific understanding and technological advances are poised to drive the next wave of important discoveries in emergent areas such as quantum computing, fusion energy, synthetic biology, and diseaseresistant crops; and potential treatments for diseases like pancreatic cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other debilitating conditions.

As a scholar of law and institutions, I often remind my students how much easier it is to demolish sound institutions than it is to create and sustain them in the first place. At this moment, commemorating the nation’s 250th year, why would we unravel a model of scientific research that has served America and Americans so extraordinarily well for more than eight decades? The imperative now is to address in a collaborative, respectful, and data-informed approach the areas that call out for repair, without squandering the genius of the model: its foundational commitment to merit, open competition, and the free flow of ideas that lie at the heart not only of the success of America’s scientific enterprise, but of the nation itself.

Acknowledgments

The author thanks P. Spector for his contributions and A. Jewett and B. Sampat for their comments on this piece. The author serves as president of Johns Hopkins University, vice chair of the Association of American Universities, and president and director of Research for a Stronger America. He is a member of the board of directors for BridgeBio Pharma, Inc. and the board of governors of TIAA. This piece solely reflects the views of the author and does not represent the positions of his affiliated organizations.

Picture: George Peabody Library, John Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, 1878

Source: John Hopkins University