ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, December 4, 1995 TAG: 9512050021
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
HIGHER education's role in economic development is getting a lot of attention these days. Fully a third of the strategic-planning thrusts of the regional New Century Council involve higher education. The state has directed its colleges and universities to designate an economic-development officer at each institution. Higher education in economic development was a featured topic at the Fourth Annual Western Virginia Strategic Development Conference last week in Roanoke.
The attention is timely - indeed, overdue. But, to be helpful, the discussion should avoid the trap of defining economic development, and higher education's place in it, too narrowly.
If anything, the breadth of higher education's economic value has yet to be fully appreciated, including within higher education itself.
For starters, there are the efforts here and there to provide practical, concrete assistance to business and industry, and to regional and local economic-development officials on the prowl for new employers. Initiatives like a new business assistance center at Radford and Virginia Tech's growing corporate research park are not only worthwhile; they exemplify some of the sorts of things colleges and universities will have to do to flourish in the next century.
While they may involve innovative means for teaching and disseminating knowledge, such efforts are not necessarily radical departures from higher education's traditional missions.
When Virginia's community colleges offer to tailor continuing-education programs to meet training needs of specific employers, existing or prospective, they also are fulfilling a core part of their traditional mission: providing postsecondary vocational education to working adults.
When Radford insists that student teams take an active role in helping small businesses develop marketing plans, the university is adhering to its traditional instructional mission, albeit outside the classroom setting.
When Tech focuses on transferring technology from the laboratory to the private-sector work place, it is acting in accord with its historic mission as the commonwealth's land-grant research university.
Most institutions of higher education aren't doing enough of this kind of thing.
Then there are the less-direct impacts on economic development. For example, many activities associated with colleges and universities - concerts, athletic events, art exhibits and the like - contribute to quality-of-life considerations whose links to economic growth are increasingly understood and appreciated.
Higher education is itself an economic force. This part of Virginia is a net importer of college students; the jobs thereby sustained are an important part of the regional economy.
Also, desirable industries often cluster around universities doing research of relevance to their fields. The potential to attract telecommunications and biotechnology businesses to this region, for instance, is greatly enhanced by Tech's presence.
More generally, brainpower tends to gravitate to higher-education centers - faculty members recruited to the region, students who choose to stay after graduation, retirees looking for an academic-oriented place to relocate in, people attracted by the community-enhancing effects of higher education.
From that brainpower can come ideas that enhance the public life of the region and thereby, at least indirectly, the prospects for economic development.
Appreciating the already large impact of higher education on economic development - and the even larger potential -is the first step toward setting strategies and maximizing benefits.
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