• Alaska Gov Proposes Education Endowment
• Authors Use Metrics to Identify NYC's Challenges in TBED
• Final Days to Register for SSTI's 13th Annual Conference
• Pittsburgh’s Green Economy Could Create Almost 12,000 Jobs over Next Six Years
• Useful Stats: Federal S&E Obligations to Academia, FY 2003–2007

Alaska Gov Proposes Education Endowment
Using the interest earned from $400 million in state savings, Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell announced a plan that would provide Alaska high-school students with scholarship funds to attend the University of Alaska or in-state vocational institutions based on academic performance.

The Governor’s Performance Scholarship would be awarded to students based on grade average. Students with an A grade average would receive a 100 percent tuition scholarship, students with a B average would receive a 75 percent tuition scholarship, and C students would receive a 50 percent tuition scholarship.

In an effort to promote college preparedness, the governor’s plan also stipulates that high-school students take four years of math, science, and language arts, and three years of social studies to be eligible for the scholarships.

Gov. Parnell will seek approval from the legislature in the upcoming session to set aside $400 million of nearly $8 billion currently in the Constitutional Budget Reserve Fund and Statutory Budget Reserve Fund to initiate the program.

A press release outlining the governor’s proposal is available at: http://www.gov.state.ak.us/news.php?id=5095.

Authors Use Metrics to Identify NYC's Challenges in TBED
While New York City's universities and research centers are among the country's top institutions for performing scientific research, the city’s institutions have not become the drivers of entrepreneurship and economic development witnessed in other regions of the U.S, according to a new report from the Center for an Urban Future. Additionally, the high cost of real estate and lack of affordable laboratory space inhibits local entrepreneurs from succeeding and deters high-tech investment. Building New York City's Innovation Economy authors Jim O'Grady and Jonathan Bowles incorporate data from an innovation index examining 48 comparative metrics of NYC's five boroughs and the greater New York City metro region.

The authors identify many of the existing components that should make New York City fertile ground for future entrepreneurial efforts. For example, in the five boroughs there are six institutions among the top 100 universities for life science R&D spending in the U.S. Generating discoveries also has been lucrative for universities in the city, as NYU collected $791 million in royalties in 2007, while Columbia University generated $135 million in the same year. The report states no other university in the U.S. bested $100 million in royalties in 2007.

Even though these knowledge-based assets are in place, the authors contend there are an insufficient number of tech-based companies arising from these resources. The report explains the shortfall occurs, in part, for the following reasons:

• The city lacks the engineering presence that provides the impetus for commercialization and New York’s academic leaders have not invested heavily in engineering programs;
• The leadership of New York’s educational and medical institutions have done little to foster a culture that promotes entrepreneurship, especially by under-investing in technology transfer programs;
• A comparatively small number of existing tech-based entrepreneurs are local, producing a shortage of people with tech-management experience who can provide mentoring and attain capital;
• The city has a small number of venture capital firms and angel investors concentrating in technology companies; and,
• New York state economic development leadership has been more assertive helping the state’s other regions and the “lion’s share” of funding goes to every part of the state but NYC.

To ameliorate these problems, the authors present several recommendations. For example, the existing universities should commit new funds in order to create “at least one” first-rate engineering program in the city. Joining with the universities, the city’s research institutions should set up proof-of-concept centers, offer courses in entrepreneurship, provide faculty time off for pursuing business interests, and develop a public policy center focused on growing NYC’s tech-based economy.

Besides providing additional recommendations for city and state government, the report calls for the state to overhaul Empire State Development (ESD), one of the state’s economic development organizations, realigning its efforts to concentrate more on supporting the innovation economy.

Both reports, Building New York City's Innovation Economy and the 2009 Index of the New York City Innovation Economy, are available at: http://nycfuture.org/content/articles/article_view.cfm?article_id=1252&article_type=0.

Attend SSTI’s Annual Conference for a Lively Discussion on Proper Metrics
With the need for TBED organizations to convey results to their stakeholders, questions often arise on the best metrics to use. As a practitioner, do you think the metrics you are using best suits the impact of your organization’s initiatives? Additionally, as a community, are there a common set of metrics that we should gravitate towards to allow comparability between programs?

SSTI has developed an interactive session to discuss these topics with three of our own staff members. Policy analysts Phillip Battle and John Slanina, and vice president Mark Skinner will lead the discussion.

More information on this special session can be found at: http://www.ssticonference.org/.

Final Days to Register for SSTI's 13th Annual Conference
Registration will close Monday for SSTI''s Annual Conference, which begins next Wednesday, Oct. 21 and runs through Friday, Oct. 23. The premier professional development event of the year for the tech-based economic development community will be taking place at the Sheraton Overland Park Hotel in Overland Park, KS. More information, including online registration options is available at: ssticonference.org.

Pittsburgh’s Green Economy Could Create 12,000 Jobs over Next Six Years
Southwestern Pennsylvania is on course to add 11,640 green jobs to its economy by 2015, according to a new report commissioned by two local organizations, the Green Building Alliance and Growing Technology through Energy and Community Health (GTECH) . The region’s green services sector is on the verge of a major boom and will be the driving force in the growth of the green economy, according to the report. The report is bullish about the future of Pittsburgh’s green economy, though it relies on a methodology intended to produce a more conservative estimate of green jobs than other approaches, the authors contend.

In order to maximize the growth of green sectors, the authors recommend that Pittsburgh implement a more coordinated and comprehensive strategy to prepare and train workers for green jobs.

Southwestern Pennsylvania is already home to 18,000 jobs in green industries, according to the report. Together with the additional newly created 11,640 jobs, the region’s employment could grow to 30,000 by 2015. The majority of these new jobs fall into the category of green services sector, which includes a variety of occupations that make use of green technologies. Green construction, consulting, installation, recycling and organic farming all fall into this sector. At the same time, the green products sector, currently the largest green sector, is expected to shrink by more than 50 percent. The report explains the decline as a reflection of a nationwide reduction in manufacturing jobs.

Over the past few years, counting green jobs and projecting the impact of green initiatives has proven to be a difficult and controversial process. To address this issue, the authors examine the share of a particular market that is green and use that share to calculate the percentage of jobs in that industry that can be considered green. This method can be used to project the growth of green jobs based on expansions and contractions of whole industries. By using this approach, the report avoids classifying whole industries as part of the green economy and instead focuses just on the green jobs within those industries.

Pittsburgh need for better coordination between its existing initiatives was singled out as a gap in the region’s current green economy. The report calls for improved partnerships between education and training programs at every step in the educational pipeline, together with linkages to green employers. The authors also call for an expansion in the region’s definition of green jobs to help leverage more federal funding for training initiatives.

The report represents the first step in designing a regional strategic plan to ensure the continuing growth of Southwestern Pennsylvania’s green economy and to position Pittsburgh as a national center for environmentally-conscious industry. Another effort is underway to produce a plan centered on the region’s various communities and their individual labor markets. The second phase of the plan will help the region deploy resources to train green workers and place them in high-quality green jobs.

Read “Southwestern Pennsylvania Green Jobs Analysis and Action Plan” at: http://www.pa-greenbuildingproducts.org/pdf/090814%20Green%20Jobs%20Report%20v.3.1.pdf.

Useful Stats
Federal S&E Obligations to Academia, FY 2003–2007
Federal R&D obligations to U.S. universities and colleges between FY 2003 and 2007 did not keep pace with inflation, according to the latest federal data from the National Science Foundation. Obligations were $25.3 billion in FY 2007, an increase of 11.1 percent from FY 2003 totals. The aggregate annual inflation rate for the country was nearly 12.7 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

NSF’s Federal Science and Engineering Support to Universities, Colleges, and Nonprofit Institutions found 40 states experienced an increase in their total federal obligations measured in current dollars over the five-year period. While 28 of the states had a percent increase over the same time period that bested the U.S. average, only 24 states had increases that exceeded the rate of inflation.

New Mexico had the largest percent increase over the five-year period, rising 45.7 percent to $182 million in FY07. Other states increased at least 25 percent from FY03 to FY07: West Virginia, North Dakota, and Tennessee.

SSTI has prepared a table tracking for each state the amount of obligations from FY03 to FY07, the percent change over this period, and the rank of this change. The table is sorted by percent change over the five years and includes the inflation rate to help readers interpret the data. (For instance, it took $112.69 in 2007 to purchase the same goods that cost $100 in 2003).

National Science Foundation’s annual series surveys the 19 federal agencies that account for almost all federal R&D obligations. NSF defines obligations as “the amounts for orders placed, contracts awarded, services received, and similar transactions during a given period, regardless of when the funds were appropriated and when future payment of money is required.” This differs from expenditures, which are actual outlays of money spent. Funds may have been obligated to an academic institution during the same fiscal year, the previous year or several years earlier in the case of some multi-year grants.

Federal Science and Engineering Support to Universities, Colleges, and Nonprofit Institutions: FY 2007 is available at: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf09315/.

SSTI's table presenting Federal S&E Obligations to Academia, by State FY2003-2007 is available at: http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/101409t.htm.