Given the crunch in public and private money available to universities throughout the country, more academic institutions are realizing the potential of revenue generated from academic research. The recently released annual survey of the Association of University Technology Managers showed that more than $1.4 billion was earned from the commercialization of academic research.
While that amount doesn’t seem like very much (considering all of the universities in the country), universities are often the home of many breakthroughs—from the decades-old sports drink, Gatorade, developed at the University of Florida for its football team to combat dehydration, to the recent collaboration of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with its sister campus in Chicago to create the start-up Xerion Advanced Battery Corporation. Xerion uses nanotechnology to make fast-charging batteries for electronic devices and cars.
In our state, the University of Minnesota raised approximately $84 million from licensing and royalties, with the bulk of that amount (roughly $74 million) coming from royalties paid on its HIV/AIDS medication, Ziagen.
Northwestern University, with more than $191 million in licensing income, led all of the 153 universities that responded to the annual survey. Northwestern’s income represented 10 percent of the total reported for all universities in the survey.
With the rising cost of higher education and escalating student debt being a hot button in the upcoming election, tapping the innovation that already exists in the research halls of universities may lead to an innovative solution to lowering the costs of higher education. Maybe some classes in entrepreneurship are in order.
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