Ideas are the key to the new economy, and educated people produce the ideas. For decades, research related to military security got the lion's share of federal funds. Then, as the Cold War ended and baby boomers hit middle age, investment shifted toward life sciences research, with its emphasis on cancer, aging and other health matters. Over the next 50 years, expect to see another major transition, toward investment in intellectual capital, or brainpower, says James J. Duderstadt, president emeritus and professor of science and engineering at the University of Michigan.
Ideas are the key to the new economy, and educated people produce the ideas.
So I think it's time that we consider new models for ramping up very rapidly the investments in understanding how people learn and how learning institutions are designed. The efforts that encouraged defense-related research in the 1950s and 1960s might serve as a model, Duderstadt suggests. The difficulty that we have right now is that the best minds in the country are not focused on this as an area of research. In a similar way, we need to engage the research enterprise in concentrating on this new priority. Duderstadt envisions a broad, multidisciplinary effort that goes beyond the kinds of research typically done in schools of education.