‘Universities are the invisible hand’
Marcia McNutt, president of the National Academy of Sciences, and Michael M. Crow, recently spoke about the challenges facing the scientific enterprise and how the institutions of science should respond.
Editor's note: This story was featured in the fall 2025 issue of ASU Thrive.
Marcia McNutt, president of the National Academy of Sciences, and Michael M. Crow, president of ASU, emphasize how science drives America’s economic success during a recent discussion for Issues in Science and Technology.
Question: Do you see this moment of shrinking budgets for scientific research as a major reset?
McNutt: I would say that if we want America to be great, we need great science.
Research that serves America
Universities fuel the breakthroughs that shape our future. By advancing scientific research to control disease, generate technological discovery and expand scientific knowledge, higher education institutions invigorate economic growth, positioning the U.S. as a global scientific leader.
“Since World War II, public sector investments in basic scientific research have formed the backbone of American ingenuity and innovation,” according to a report by The Science Coalition.
Learn more at researchmatters.asu.edu.
In the past, budgets have only modestly been adjusted from the year before. And if some new exciting field emerges, then our government enterprise looks for new money to help bolster this breakthrough area.
Very rarely do we reallocate money from a place where there’s not much happening and move it over to another field where the science is rapidly advancing. I think at a time when there’s so much concern about inflation and other matters, it does make sense to pull together scientists and select priorities.
But that’s not what we’re doing. Cutting certain areas of inquiry based on ideology is not going to make America great.
Crow: Yes. Following on Marcia’s points, the United States has been outperforming all other economies. This is an essential point in arguing against taking a meat cleaver to the American scientific enterprise.
Since 1945, 75% of all global economic growth is derivative of technological advance. And since 1990, 90% of that technical advance is derivative of fundamental scientific understanding, which was never the case before.
The opportunity for making America great lies in the foundation it has created for global economic growth — giving us trading partners and opportunities to generate American wealth and build our nation. Many people have missed the significance of this transformation into a knowledge-driven, scientifically grounded, technology-advancing economy.
McNutt: You know, another way to say this is if we look around the world at which countries are prosperous, there are two classes of them.
There are those nations that have invested in science and technology, and they are doing well. They are creating entire new industries, new disciplines, new ways to advance the welfare of humans on this planet.
The other kind of country that is doing well economically is the kind with a lot of natural resources to exploit — but that source of wealth is not sustainable.
Science is still the endless frontier of knowledge and advancement.
Q: What can be done to reshape this conversation in this moment? Where do you see opportunities?
Crow: Look at the People’s Republic of China. Why did China decide 30 years ago to build a hundred new research universities?
Certainly there are military reasons, but also economic-competition reasons. China thinks: If we can beat the Americans in science and technology, we win.
Our nation has become confused by the fact that universities are very complex places. Many people are mad at schools about social, political or freedom of speech issues, and those have to be dealt with.
But now our great universities, which are critical to America’s economic competitiveness, are being thwarted in the research space as punishment for perceived misbehavior in those other spaces.
Those two things should be separate. You’re going to wound the country, allow others to gain scientific and technological dominance, and lose our economic momentum.
Q: You both seem to have a vision of the STEM enterprise using this time to rethink what STEM careers look like.
Crow: Yes, I was just in meetings about licensing to operate part of our engineering school in the United Kingdom, where we can give three-year degrees.
We’re learning to speed up undergraduate degrees and use advanced technologies to speed entry into STEM. We need to change PhD programs — make them shorter, faster and more variable in terms of outcomes.
Our competitors (in other countries) are not reducing their investments in science and technology or in universities. It’s just the opposite.
They’re building entire clusters of universities built on the American model.
The United States was the first country that gave general rank-and-file citizens the ability to own intellectual property. Beginning with President Jefferson, exploration became a core national activity. Then we built agriculture as a core national activity, then nuclear power, then science itself and now all things digital. In every one of these cases, the only way that we’ve made any progress is through empowerment of the universities. Universities are the invisible hand.
Taking a narrow view of universities ignores their historical contribution. Pick something as simple as American agriculture. We’ve had no famines. We have unbelievable food in every grocery store. We have access to everything at relatively low cost. We have 2% of the population feeding the entire country and much of the world through technological advancements.
And it all goes on silently, connected to these land-grant colleges and universities in each and every state, to the county extension officers who are working on scientific transfer and scientific understanding. You don’t know where all this bounty came from when you go to the grocery store, because it’s invisible.
All of that is in jeopardy. This is a critical strategic error being made right now.
The full interview
Read the full story from Issues in Science and Technology at issues.org/interview-mcnutt-crow.
ASU President Michael Crow also joined CNBC’s Morgan Brennan at the CNBC CEO Council Summit discuss transforming education systems. Watch that interview on the CNBC website.
More Science and technology
Roots of Alzheimer’s disease extend beyond the brain
For decades, Alzheimer’s disease has been treated as a condition that begins and ends in the brain. Researchers have focused on the buildup of amyloid plaques, tangles of tau protein and the slow…
ASU microscopes help solve decades-old asteroid-impact deposit mystery
Axel Wittmann had always had “a fondness for exotic rocks,” as he puts it, his favorite being suevite, formed from intense meteorite collisions. But in 2009, when he met fellow geologist Philippe…
Major in motion
Inside a dimly lit computer lab at Arizona State University, U.S. Space Force Maj. Tyler Williams leans over a glowing monitor, lines of simulated network traffic scrolling by faster than most eyes…