The basic structure of today's academic research enterprise was set out fifty years ago in the seminal report,Science, the Endless Frontier, produced by a post-war study group chaired by Vannevar Bush. The central theme of the document was that the nation's health, economy, and military security required continual deployment of new scientific knowledge and that the federal government was obligated to ensure basic scientific progress and the production of trained personnel in the national interest. It insisted that federal patronage was essential for the advancement of knowledge.

The resulting partnership between the federal government and the nation's universities has had extraordinary impact. It has made America the world's leading source of fundamental scientific knowledge. It has also produced the well-trained scientists and engineers capable of applying this new knowledge. This academic research enterprise has played a critical role in the conduct of more applied, mission-focused research in a host of areas including health care, agriculture, national defense, and economic development.

Unfortunately, in recent years the basic principles of this extraordinarily productive research partnership have begun to unravel. Scientists and universities are questioning whether they can depend on the stable and solid relationship they had come to trust and that has paid such enormous dividends in initiative, innovation, and creativity.

At the same time powerful forces, including obsolete cost structures, changing societal demand, and rapidly evolving information technology, are driving a massive restructuring of the American higher education enterprise, similar to that occurring in other critical industries such as health care, telecommunications, and energy. Although the great diversity of our colleges and universities will dictate an array of different strategies in th e years ahead, all must cope with a future of unprecedented change, presenting both unusual challenges and opportunities. This era of change will pose a particular challenge to the dominant institutional form of the 20th Century, the American research university.