SSTI Digest

A recent report from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation examined the changing makeup of entrepreneurship over the period of 1996 to 2019, finding that older people, immigrants, and minorities are becoming new entrepreneurs at increasing rates. The report pulls from data collected for the foundation’s Indicators of Early-Stage Entrepreneurship series, and examines the trends in race and ethnicity, age, and immigration among new entrepreneurs. The report highlights three findings: The share of all new entrepreneurs – broadly defined as any adult who starts a new business — who are Latinx doubled between 1996 and 2019. The report also shows that the share of Black and Asian entrepreneurs has grown but at a moderate pace relative to the Latinx population, while the share of all new entrepreneurs who are white decreased over the same period. New entrepreneurs were generally younger in 1996, but were more representative of all age groups in 2019. The data are segmented into four age groups — ages 20-34, 35-44, 45-54, and 55-64. The report indicates that new entrepreneurship among the younger two groups has steadily decreased over the period, while entrepreneurship…

More than 500 colleges and universities nationwide showed warning signs in a stress test that was conducted before the pandemic according to a new series of reports by the Hechinger Report and NBC News. Declining enrollment and decreased state government support had left dozens of universities under financial stress. With the added pressures of the coronavirus pandemic, “the fabric of American higher education as become even more strained,” the report says. The Hechinger Report created a financial fitness tracker examining key metrics including enrollment, tuition revenue, public funding and endowment health among 2,662 schools that were included in the analysis. In addition to the more than 500 schools that showed warning signs in two or more metrics, the analysis found an uneven distribution of problems with Ohio and Illinois combined having more than 10 percent of all the institutions potentially facing trouble. Other findings show that nearly 30 percent of all four-year schools brought in less tuition revenue per student in 2017-18 than in 2009-10; about 700 public campuses received less in state and local appropriations over that same time period; and,…

The importance of higher education institutions in helping rural communities build innovation-based ecosystems has been detailed in a report released by the Center on Rural Innovation. Higher Ed’s Key Role In Rural Innovation Ecosystems profiles 10 colleges and universities that have been engaged in their area’s innovation environment and explores what techniques each institution has found most useful in building that ecosystem. While each college and university has a different roadmap toward building their area’s innovation environment, the Center on Rural Innovation found four primary categories that play an important part in higher ed’s contributions to building rural innovation and tech-based ecosystems: Digital skills programing – The report notes that rural colleges and universities have found success in expanding their information technology offerings, providing students with a stronger foundation of digital skills and potentially attracting growing tech-based industries. Additionally, higher education’s focus on expanding information technology programing can also lead to stronger connectivity for the area, attracting broadband service providers that…

A leading technology association has stepped up to positively impact tech diversity and inclusion through a new challenge that aims to double the percentage of the state’s Black and Latinx tech workers — currently at 5 and 7 percent respectively — by the end of the decade. The Mass Technology Leadership Council (MassTLC) launched a 2030 Challenge earlier this week that also will continue to work towards gender parity in the state’s tech workforce. According to a release announcing the initiative, the new challenge came about in response to the organization’s benchmarking of the state’s tech sector, including key metrics on race, ethnicity and gender, which showed that the Massachusetts tech sector, one of the highest paying sectors in one of the most expensive regions in the country, does not adequately reflect the diverse population of the state. MassTLC is inviting organizations that employ tech workers to join the Tech Compact for Social Justice by committing to change within their own organizations. MassTLC will work with Tech Compact signers over the coming months and years to track progress, spotlight leadership, share best practices, work to…

Non-college workers who long found refuge and economic mobility in thriving cities have seen those opportunities diminish and in turn have moved out of the areas. Although cities remain vibrant for workers with advanced degrees, “the urban skills and earnings escalator for non-college workers has lost its ability to lift workers up the income ladder,” finds David Autor in his recent research brief. The Faltering Escalator of Urban Opportunity highlights this troubling trend plaguing cities since 1980 and posits some policy prescriptions to try to combat the negative trends. Additionally, Autor cautions that the present COVID-19 crisis could exacerbate the challenges afflicting non-college workers in U.S. cities. Autor, director of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Labor Studies Program, and co-chair of the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future, explores how the opportunity offered by urban and non-urban labor markets to college and non-college workers has changed since 1980. Noting that the polarization of work (employment has become increasingly concentrated in high-education, high-wage occupations and in low-education, low-wage occupations, at the expense…

After more than a year of research and facing greater disruption to the workforce than imagined at the outset, the National Governors Association (NGA) has released a guide for governors and state policymakers to help build a technologically resilient workforce. Written before the COVID-19 outbreak, the authors of the report attest that trends previously identified will only accelerate, and thus there is even greater urgency for policy transformations that should be implemented as part of a system wide, resilient education and workforce development agenda.

While business investments towards research and development have varied among states, the overall trend throughout the country has been a positive one. Business R&D funding has weathered two recessions over the past 20 years, with many states seeing investments grow beyond their pre-recession levels. While the scope of COVID-19’s economic impact continues to grow, business R&D investment has shown a strong history of recovering from, and building beyond, national financial downturns. While SSTI has recently reviewed business R&D investments, it is revisited here to examine longer-term trends and to help build an idea of how business R&D spending was affected by both the 2001 and 2008 recessions. Despite these economic downturns, states across the country prior to the pandemic had begun to see their business R&D investments grow beyond their pre-recession levels. Although the economic impacts of COVID-19 continue to grow, an understanding of how states’ business R&D funding reacted to previous financial downturns may prove helpful moving forward. The data, gathered from the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Science and Engineering…

The Kauffman Foundation has announced 17 organizations will share the $1.5 million in funding allocated through their Heartland Challenge. These grantees will work to solve specific challenges entrepreneurs in the heartland region — comprised of Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas — face, and will participate in facilitated, peer-learning communities of practice to share knowledge across the region. “Entrepreneurship represents an opportunity for this region to reverse a decades-long trend of economic decline,” said Melissa Roberts Chapman, Kauffman’s senior program officer in entrepreneurship. “Creating more equitable ecosystems, revitalizing rural communities and accelerating IP-driven business creation are three things we can do to ensure that starting a business in the Heartland isn’t harder than it has to be. In fact, the only way we can regain momentum in the cities and rural areas of Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas, is to work together to meet the challenges ahead of us.” The challenge serves as an opportunity to develop, catalyze, and expand inclusive programs, create communities of practice, and strengthen regional entrepreneurial ecosystems…

A recent hearing by the House science committee provided several experts, including Lee Cheatham from SSTI-member Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, an opportunity to discuss the importance of science and innovation to achieving a “clean energy future.” Comments by the panelists largely focused on the value of public-private partnerships, such as those modeled through SBIR/STTR, prize competitions, and joint research at national labs, to developing innovations that can be transformed by new and established companies into new products and jobs. Questions from the committee members were largely constructive, seeking details on how specific policies and programs could unlock further activities and successes. The committee has worked on nearly 50 energy-related bills so far this session and, based on this hearing, may be considering legislation specific to transforming Department of Energy research before the end of the year.

Exactly 21 years after the SSTI Weekly Digest ran its first story on the digital divide, a recent report by the Government Accountability Office confirms what inestimable studies before it have reported: access to broadband has expanded, but significant shortcomings in broadband still exist. Meanwhile, the Federal Communications Commission has issued new rules to improve collection and mapping of broadband availability. The commission is also seeking comments on proposals to ensure the accuracy of the new broadband coverage maps.

In an hours-long virtual workshop that could have covered days, the presidents of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and leaders from government, academia, and publishing explored key questions the research enterprise must address to build a more effective and resilient 21st century research university. Facing challenges that may have long been present but have been exacerbated and accelerated by the COVID-19 crisis, the leaders began exploring questions that could help research universities rebound to a better place than the pre-pandemic status quo. Facing issues including strained budgets, intellectual property challenges, decreases in state funding, restrictions on international students, racial inequality, laboratory challenges and more, research universities were already grappling with myriad challenges. Speakers in the workshop, from Mary Sue Coleman, president of the Association of American Universities, to Michael Lauer, deputy director for extramural research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and France A. Córdova, the 14th director of the National Science Foundation, the leaders presented a sometimes grim picture of the…

At a time when higher education is facing some of its greatest challenges, its value both for individuals and for states is reinforced through the findings of a recent working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research. In “The Economic Impact of Access to Public Four-Year Colleges,” Jonathan Smith et al. show through an examination of the University System of Georgia that access to public higher education leads to “substantial economic benefits for the marginal student,” and that the state roughly breaks even on its initial investment after 10 years. Although other studies have provided descriptive evidence that identify colleges as catalysts for economic mobility, the authors looked for causal evidence of the linkage and employ a novel approach through credit bureau data.