University research and licensing

Marshall University wants to be thought of as a research institution. That's why President Stephen Kopp is trying to get the state to provide Marshall with a few million to endow a research institute on the Marshall campus.

How lucrative research can be and how far behind all schools in the state are -- even the gold and blue up north -- can be seen in a big report by the Southern Regional Education Board. The full report, including lots of Excel charts, can be found here. I've not had enough time to go through it thoroughly, and in the places where I have looked for detailed information, some numbers jump out at me as not possibly being true, so I've made a call or two to check on them.

This one, in light of Marshall's research goals, does jump at me:

From 1995 to 2005, West Virginia's institutions of higher education ranked near the bottom in terms of income from patents and licensing. West Virginia schools raked in all of $91,000 in that time. Florida schools ranked second in the nation at nearly $1.35 billion. Georgia was fifth with $447.6 million.

In West Virginia, $91,000 is a lot of money. In Florida, it's probably not even expense account money, when you compare the two revenue streams. If you want to look at the states with less reported licensing income than West Virginia, you have to look at Wyoming, South Dakota and Alaska.

To think that 50 years ago, the populations of West Virginia and Florida were about equal.

Marshall is banking on biotech. So are a lot of other people. Kopp wants to establish the Marshall Institute for Interdisciplinary Research, or MIIR for short, to jump-start some serious research that could have commercial applications.

Marshall and other school(s) have a long way to go to catch up with some of their peers in this regard. It could come down to resources. Does Marshall build an indoor football practice facility, a baseball stadium or an engineering building?