Are Universities Our "Engines of Innovation"?

George Leef

  • Article
  • November 22, 2010

UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp recently published a book in which he maintains that universities are the country's "engines of innovation." In today's Pope Center article, however, Jay Schalin runs that notion past a real inventor and finds that it doesn't fly. Why? Mainly because universities lack the key ingredient for entrepreneurial discovery: the profit motive.

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