CLOSE THE INNOVATION DEFICIT

The following open letter was sent today from 165 university presidents and chancellors.  Additional university leaders are lending their support for this critical effort at www.innovationdeficit.org 

Dear President Obama & Members of the 113th Congress:

Our nation’s role as the world’s innovation leader is in serious jeopardy.  The combination of eroding federal investments in research and higher education, additional cuts due to sequestration, and the enormous resources other nations are pouring into these areas is creating a new kind of deficit for the United States: an innovation deficit.  Closing this innovation deficit—the widening gap between needed and actual investments—must be a national imperative.  

Ignoring the innovation deficit will have serious consequences: a less prepared, less highly skilled U.S. workforce, fewer U.S.-based scientific and technological breakthroughs, fewer U.S.-based patents, and fewer U.S. start-ups, products, and jobs.  These impacts may not be immediately obvious because the education and research that lead to advances do not happen overnight.  But the consequences are inevitable if we do not reverse course.

The path for resolving appropriations, the debt limit, and a potential long-term budget agreement this fall is unclear.  What should be clear is that the answer to our nation’s fiscal woes must include sustained strategic federal investments in research and student financial aid to close the innovation deficit and bolster our nation’s economic and national security for decades to come.

Read the rest of the letter here...