For the last 40 years, higher education has been the dominant performer of basic research in the United States, but there has been a slide in higher education’s share over the last 20 years as businesses have increased their performance of basic R&D (Figure 1). If the current trendline continues, businesses will soon surpass higher education as basic R&D performers and become the predominant basic R&D performer just as they have been in applied R&D for decades.

With classes resuming for the fall term, SSTI continues its reflection on the state of higher education. In last week's issue, today's and next week's, we’re examining where higher ed has been and where it currently stands. The post-secondary education system is the cornerstone of the American innovation system—as an R&D performer, moving research into the marketplace, offering technical assistance to companies, and supplying a skilled workforce.

Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs offer opportunities for small businesses to innovate and secure federal funding for their ideas from eleven U.S. government agencies. Every state in the U.S. assists potential SBIR/STTR companies to increase their chances of success. SSTI has created a new SBIR/STTR resource guide that includes examples of state-level initiatives in four broad categories: 

Quantum technologies are revolutionizing sensors, computation, and communication, according to an article from the World Economic Forum.

Ohio recently awarded more than $97 million for the Northwest Ohio Glass Innovation Hub in Toledo, the onMain Innovation Hub in Dayton, and the Greater Akron Polymer Innovation Hub in Akron. These hubs are part of the recently created a $125 million Ohio Innovation Hubs Program.

The Economic Development Administration has released the 2024 Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for its Build to Scale program. With $50 million in available funding, the program continues to support regional commercialization, entrepreneurship, and capital formation efforts. This year’s competition, however, comes with a restructured application process and updated evaluation criteria.

Key changes for 2024

With the release of the Economic Development Administration’s (EDA) 2024 Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for its Build to Scale program, time has begun ticking towards the October 28 application deadline.

While production of internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles are expected to decline from 12 million in 2023 to 5.2 million in 2029 and battery electric vehicles (BEVs), powered exclusively by an electric battery, would increase from 1.1 million to 7.3 million vehicles during the same period, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago concludes the change is unlikely to cause much change in the geographic location of automobile manufacturers, according to an

The Fearless Fund and Fearless Foundation, which made awards restricted to Black female entrepreneurs, announced a settlement on September 10 with the American Alliance for Equal Rights (AAER) and will end its Fearless Strivers Grant Contest that was targeted in a racial discrimination lawsuit by AAER. The settlement means that states within the U.S.

Total student loan debt in the United States increased 558% from the first quarter of 2003 to the second quarter of 2024, increasing from $240 billion to $1.58 trillion, according to Federal Reserve Bank of New York data.

In the last 20 years, college tuition has doubled, making tuition and required fees the major component of the rising costs of attending college. Figure 1 shows that the average tuition and fees at public four-year schools increased by 84% between the 1999-2000 and 2019-2020 academic years, far faster than the 15.7% increase in median household income during that period (note this period was chosen to avoid pandemic era swings in data).

In this Digest issue, SSTI continues its examination on the state of higher education. Today, we start with rising student loan debt, which research shows has dire consequences on borrowers, including delayed home ownership, hindered retirement savings, and financial stress.

A recent working paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Self-reinforcing Glass Ceilings by Carlos F. Avenancio-León, Alessio Piccolo, and Leslie Sheng Shen delves into the complexities of the gender pay gap, even after it has narrowed. The authors challenge the conventional understanding that a shrinking gender pay gap automatically leads to greater gender equality.

Higher education R&D expenditures, while continuing to steadily increase, have not grown evenly across state lines. This matters to successful TBED policymakers because a strong R&D enterprise within a state’s public and private institutions of higher education can and should provide a consistent source of skilled workers, new technology, and sources for innovation-driven business growth. So where is R&D growing?

The United States’ global competitiveness rank, as calculated by the International Institute of for Management Development, fell three points from 9th in 2023 to 12th in 2024. The nation’s ranking for government efficiency had an even sharper drop of nine points, from 25th in 2023 to 34th in 2024. In timely response to these trends, two federal advisory committees recently submitted reports outlining ways for the U.S.

The new Tech Hub awards from EDA and the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Regional Innovation Engines (Engines) program support regions advancing a critical technology area with existing traction in their region but for proposers, identifying such areas is often challenging.

January 22, 2025, at 2:00 PM ET | Zoom

President Biden signed legislation that reauthorized the Economic Development Administration (EDA) on Jan. 4. With the Heritage Foundation, among others, consistently calling for EDA’s elimination, EDA’s reauthorization is no small feat on its own. The strong bipartisan support for the bill, which included provisions related to water resources development, is perhaps even more remarkable.

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration (EDA) announced awards totaling approximately $210 million in implementation grants, ranging between approximately $22 million and $48 million, to six Tech Hub designees from recently passed appropriations from Congress.

Readers may have noticed the most populous states end up topping many of the statistical tables related to economic development. Normalizing the data by some relevant, related measure can provide a higher quality look that is a little closer to the “apples to apples” appeal that might help influence some policy issues. For this week’s edition of Useful Stats, SSTI is exploring research intensity as a component of state gross domestic product (GDP) and the research load “carried” by each member of the R&D personnel within the state’s higher education community.

The launch of a new private equity firm in central Ohio is a reminder of the continuing ripple effects of a decades-long strategy of cultivating an innovation system. If the State of Ohio hadn’t created and provided sustained funding over decades for its integrated array of technology-based economic development programs, the founders of a newly launched private equity firm wouldn’t be in the position now to commit to helping more mid-market companies succeed in central Ohio.

In this week’s continuing coverage of gubernatorial addresses as they impact the innovation economy, the following highlights have been selected from three of the eight State of the States or budget addresses given between Jan. 28 and Feb. 5, 2025, by the governors from Indiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina. This is the first address for Indiana's new governor, and it provides evidence of economic development being one of his top priorities.

President Trump’s nominee to become Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, cleared the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation on Feb. 4 by a vote of 16 to 12. A floor vote is expected soon, possibly still this week. Among the agencies within the Commerce Department are two agencies that support core elements of regional innovation and technology-based economic development more broadly.

Answering the question of what impact a flat 15% F&A reimbursement rate would have on the nation’s SBIR startups requires real data. The data doesn’t currently exist that we are aware of.

A Feb.