BASIC RESEARCH AND THE STATE UNIVERSITY 



cost sheet because they represent an investment in the future 

 as well. 



Universities, thus, are ideally set up to conduct a major 

 proportion of the national research effort. In industry, it has 

 been estimated that at least a three-to-five-year period is required 

 before dividends from any one research project may begin to 

 pay out. On top of this, it is reported that, while a definite study 

 on project failure rates has yet to be done, only one project in 

 eight is ever worth while, and this has been termed an excessive 

 rate for many of the smaller or medium-sized industries to sup- 

 port. In universities, however, we take little note of the percent- 

 age of experiments that fail to turn out in the way we thought 

 they would, and as a matter of reality often consider negative 

 results as important from the point of view of knowledge gained 

 as a result confirming an original hypothesis. This is because 

 we are primarily interested in knowledge and not profit. Any 

 knowledge acquired, in our terms, is profit in itself. 



This is not to say that we can conduct all kinds of research 

 more profitably than industry, and that industry should, there- 

 fore, turn its laboratories over to us. In a competitive world, the 

 yields from research are fast becoming a necessity for economic 

 survival of individual organizations and much developmental 

 research will continue to be performed by industry, if for no 

 other reason than the fact that the result of research will be 

 available only to the sponsor and not dumped immediately into 

 the hopper of knowledge from which everyone can take what 

 he wants or needs. Furthermore, much developmental research 

 can best be conducted by individuals whose interests are tied 

 closely on a long-term basis to that of the organization with 

 which they are associated. This type of arrangement creates a 

 personal motivation which might otherwise not be particularly 



strong. 



This eliminates from the scope of state university work 



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