The public research universities in the United States got their start with the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1869. It was one of the most momentous acts signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln when he was in the midst of prosecuting the Civil War. States were tasked to provide education, service, and research assistance to transform a mostly agrarian society into a modern industrial society. Later the designations of sea grant and space grant made some of the universities even more relevant. The three pillars of such universities were teaching, research and service. Today there are land grant universities in every state and many of them are in the front-lines of research activity.

During the second half of the 20^th century, many of these same universities received further support from the federal government as investments in research grew after World War II. These universities were the engines of creativity and invention along with the prominent private universities that had existed for a longer time. Over time, these investments in higher education have provided the impetus to substantial economic development activities led by major research universities in many states. Thus, economic development became the fourth rail of a public university mission.

Beginning in the mid 1980’s, we have seen a substantial reduction in investments in federally supported university research. This can be partially attributed to flawed planning and forethought towards science funding, weak economic outlook, and increased federal debt. At the same time, competition from other developing nations has increased and our own scientific enterprise is being challenged to be more innovative. Our scientists and their productivity are still the envy of the world and we have maintained our superiority in science and technological endeavors. Industry, on the other hand, have started to divest their internal “blue-sky” research efforts and focused more on product development alone. We have also witnessed a slow but sure decline in state support of public research universities all over the nation. This disinvestment in public support of higher education has eroded our capability to innovate and provided ample opportunities for other competing nations to catch up with us. Under the increased pressure of less federal funding for research and state support of higher education, universities throughout the country have found themselves at crossroads with respect to the need to reinvent them and seek new directions of development.

So, how do you reinvent the universities of today for the 21^st century? I suggest a ten-point formula for “reinventing” the modern research university:

1. Universities need to rethink disciplinary boundaries and encourage gradual transformations to multidisciplinary structures with no clear departmental distinctions. In other words, we need to go back to the original definition of a University. Most of the present-day and future problems are necessarily of a multidisciplinary nature and we need to encourage faculty and students to think along those lines.
2. Universities should admit students with no home department or college affiliation and allow them to design their own curriculum and course content to fit their own desires. The federal government should encourage such efforts by tying federal student aid to such university initiatives.
3. University leaders should play a major role in rebuilding the “trust” factor between academia, government, and industry, which at present is broken. This should also lead to a better articulation of the “relevance” of public research universities to the taxpayers who fund them.
4. Universities should strive to procure more independence in setting proper and affordable tuition. The federal student aid should be tied to state support of higher education, graduation rates and, mid-career earning potentials of its graduates.
5. Universities should proactively design regional co-operations among themselves and reduce duplication of efforts. On-line education initiatives can surely help in this regard.
6. The top tier universities should work constructively together to undertake solving global issues and attract the best and brightest from all nations to do so. In this respect, some lower tier universities should be relegated to teaching and service related activities only.
7. Universities should encourage the faculty to move from incremental research and strive for “blue-sky, innovative” research. This would also require that national federal funding agencies are encouraged to move from relying too much on “peer review”. In other words, we need to rethink the norms of “peer” review in establishing funding priorities.
8. Industry and foundations that support “applied + development” research should be encouraged to rely more on university faculty to fulfill their mission of goal-oriented research. This will necessarily require reinventing intellectual property (IP) policies to make them “smarter”. Research incubators should be promoted at universities on a regional scale to excel in particular facets of research. Faculty entrepreneurship should be encouraged via reconsideration of promotion and tenure policies.
9. Academic freedom and tenure should be reinforced so that faculties are empowered to work on all types of research and destroy dogmas. Similarly, undue emphasis on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines at the expense of “liberal” arts (arts, humanities, and social sciences) should be moderated to produce truly “global” citizens.
10. Graduate education should be totally restructured to move from the post World War II paradigm that most universities are clinging to and making it worthless for many students.