Do Universities Increase Innovation In Their Communities?

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

File this one under “random stuff that came through my Twitter feed today.” It’s a paper from Michael Andrews, a postdoc at Northwestern, and it examines whether universities promote innovation. The methodology is simple, though the work required to gather the data appears to be rather stunning. Basically, Andrews looks at counties that were chosen as sites for public universities (mostly in the 19th century) and examines whether they benefited from a subsquent upsurge in patent activity. The answer turns out to be yes.

But there’s more to it. Andrews also looks at what he calls “consolation prize” counties:

Consolation prizes are especially common in western states that were largely unsettled and achieved statehood after the passage of the Morrill Act in 1862. In these states, typically many state institutions were allocated at the same time, including the state capital, the state prison, the state hospital, or the state insane asylum. While numerous localities may have been lobbying to get a state institution, which locality ended up with which institution was as good as random. For one famous example, the Tucson delegation set out for Prescott for the Arizona territorial legislature in 1885 intent on getting the state mental hospital. But flooding on the Salt River delayed the delegation. By the time they reached Prescott, the mental hospital had already been spoken for; Tucson was stuck with state university.

Poor Tucson! But I suppose things turned out OK for them in the long run. However, these consolation counties provide Andrews with a good natural test of whether universities themselves are responsible for the increase in patents. It turns out they aren’t:

Table 13 shows results that explicitly consider the consolation prize counties. In column 1, I compare patenting in the college counties to consolation prize counties. The coefficient is a statistically insignificant 16%, smaller than the baseline estimate of 32%. This suggests that college counties do not increase their patenting much faster than counties that received prisons, hospitals, or insane asylums.

There are some obvious jokes to be made here, but I’ll leave that to others. The surprising conclusion is that universities don’t, in fact, do much to increase innovation locally. Any county that gets a major state facility will see a similar increase in population and a similar increase in patent activity:

Obviously universities do have an impact on innovation, but apparently it’s diffused all over the country as students graduate and move away. What’s left is usually a nice, bustling town, but not a hub of innovative activity.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate