Every state in America is under siege by this innovation mantra that is driven by the fact that America is somehow needing to redouble its efforts in corporate innovation because it is competing with the world for global business. This is why public universities are being hijacked, it is why we are seeing Maryland transportation being run by a French business, and it is used as the reason corporations can no longer pay taxes as they must be competitive with other nations. ALL OF THIS IS HYPE USED TO EXPLAIN THE USE OF OUR TAXPAYER MONEY FOR BOOSTING CORPORATE PROFITS. American jobs are not dependent on the growth of these businesses globally......domestic jobs are hindered by this global growth. This growth only grows profits and it makes these companies unaccountable to anyone other than shareholders.
Third Way corporate democrats are making these changes. It is why Maryland's policy is moving this way. It is not good for the democratic base because as we know, it is killing the middle/lower classes. THEY ARE TELLING US......TOUGH LUCK. WE ARE TELLING THEM.....NO YOU DON'T!!!!
O'Malley made his political career moving Maryland Forward as his campaign slogan shows. Below I want to show you where these pols want to take us. We see an article on MIT that is in full corporate swing and is the prototype of other public universities. You can see that they amount of public and student money that goes into these 'corporate programs' enriches a few within these departments and simply serves as a corporate laboratory. IT DOES NOT BENEFIT MOST PEOPLE AND IT COSTS ALL OF US DEARLY AS ACCESS TO A BASIC EDUCATION IS DISTORTED SIMPLY TO MEET THESE CORPORATE GOALS.
Why the French company of Veola in Maryland rather than growing our own industry-players? IN ORDER TO OPEN MARKETS IN OTHER COUNTRIES, THE US MUST ALLOW OTHER COUNTRIES TO OPEN THEIR MARKETS HERE. Are we getting good service or best practices? NO. We are simply opening a door for whomever O'Malley and the Maryland Assembly is promoting. So, Maryland taxpayers paid for all of the new buses and public transport vehicles tied to Veola......that is where our Transportation Trust fund went. Contracts will have those buses owned by whom at the end of the term?
VOTE YOUR INCUMBENT OUT OF OFFICE!!!!
BELOW YOU SEE KOCH BROTHERS AND TEA PARTY GOVERNOR SCOTT WALKER PROPOSING JUST WHAT IS ALREADY HAPPENING IN MARYLAND. UMBC IS A KOCH BROTHER'S DREAM. U OF M IS ON ITS WAY. IT IS EASY TO SEE HOW THIRD WAY CORPORATE DEMOCRATS ARE JUST AS CORPORATE AS ANY REPUBLICAN. IT'S HARD TO BE A DEMOCRAT WITH GOALS OF WEALTH AND GLOBAL CORPORATIONS LIKE THAT.
Wisconsin Governor Seeks Shift in Higher Ed November 19, 2012 - 4:20am Higher Ed
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, a Republican, announced in a speech Friday night at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California that he plans to propose major changes in the funding of technical colleges and University of Wisconsin System, The Wisconsin State Journal reported. Walker said that funding needs to shift so that higher education institutions are funded not on enrollment or even completion, but on completion in programs that train students for jobs that the state needs.
"We’re going to tie our funding in our technical colleges and our University of Wisconsin System into performance and say if you want money, we need you to perform, and particularly in higher education, we need you to perform not just in how many people you have in the classroom.
"In higher education, that means not only degrees, but are young people getting degrees in jobs that are open and needed today, not just the jobs that the universities want to give us, or degrees that people want to give us?"
"We’re going to tie our funding in our technical colleges and our University of Wisconsin System into performance and say if you want money, we need you to perform, and particularly in higher education, we need you to perform not just in how many people you have in the classroom.
"In higher education, that means not only degrees, but are young people getting degrees in jobs that are open and needed today, not just the jobs that the universities want to give us, or degrees that people want to give us?"
"We’re going to tie our funding in our technical colleges and our University of Wisconsin System into performance and say if you want money, we need you to perform, and particularly in higher education, we need you to perform not just in how many people you have in the classroom," he said. "In higher education, that means not only degrees, but are young people getting degrees in jobs that are open and needed today, not just the jobs that the universities want to give us, or degrees that people want to give us?"
Senate Minority Leader Chris Larson, a Democrat, said that Walker's plan sounds like "social engineering" that would force students to study "what industry wants" rather than what students want.
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THIS STUDY SHOWS THAT ALL OF THESE EFFORTS AT RECREATING SCHOOL STRUCTURES ARE NOT GIVING THE PUBLIC BETTER QUALITY........WHY IS IT THAT MARYLAND IS ALWAYS PLOWING AHEAD WITH POLICY THAT IS PROVING TO BE INEFFECTIVE IF NOT BAD FOR THE PUBLIC? THESE POLS ARE WORKING FOR GLOBAL CORPORATIONS......NOT YOU AND ME.
VOTE YOUR INCUMBENT OUT OF OFFICE!!!!
Study: Deregulated Universities Don't Have Better Outcomes October 18, 2012 - 3:00am Inside Higher Ed
A study released Wednesday by Policy Matters Ohio, a nonpartisan think tank, found that deregulating the governance structure of public higher education institutions -- a primary component of Ohio Governor John Kasich's higher education agenda -- doesn't have a significant effect on outcomes such as enrollment, graduation rate and the number of low-income students who graduate, but could lead to higher tuition rates, at least in the states examined. The study looked at three classes of institutions: "highly deregulated" (Virginia and Colorado), "partially deregulated" (Illinois, New Jersey and Texas), and "coordinated" (Kentucky, Maryland and Minnesota) and compared their outcomes to that of the nation and Ohio over the past decade.
"Given the track record of deregulation in other states, we have little reason to think that this approach will make tuition more affordable, increase access for low- and moderate-income students, or increase graduation rates," the report's authors write. "The primary factor affecting access and affordability is state support for higher education and state targeting of support for low- and moderate-income families."
The report's authors readily acknowledge that most of the deregulation took place about halfway through the decade and that confounding variables in the states selected might have an effect on the overall outcomes.
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WONDER WHY WE ARE NOT SEEING JOB CREATION AS ALL OF THIS TAXPAYER MONEY IS SUNK INTO THESE ECONOMIC TROUGHS? ALL OF THESE SCHEMES TO MARKET THE STATE ARE MET WITH A WORLD OF SIMILAR MARKETING AGENTS THAT ARE LOST IN THE HYPE. WE ALL KNOW HOW TO MAKE JOBS.......WE HAVE PEOPLE IN OFFICE BENT ON MAKING THOSE BUSINESSES INTERNATIONAL. WE WATCH AS O'MALLEY GOES TO INDIA AND ISRAEL ON ECONOMIC JUNKETS.......WE ARE PAYING FOR HIS NATIONAL CAMPAIGN SPOTLIGHTS
Report: DBED just a ‘marketing agency’ Posted: 9:00 am Mon, November 26, 2012
By Alexander Pyles
Daily Record Business Writer
Maryland’s economic development agency uses more resources to market the state than it does to develop the state’s job market, according to a report by an anti-tax group that is frequently critical of the O’Malley administration’s business acumen.
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WHO ARE THESE STUDENTS GETTING INTO ELITE SCHOOLS AND COMING AWAY WITH FUTURE CORPORATE JOBS ALL FINANCED BY FEDERAL AND STATE TAXPAYERS? LOOK AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS ARTICLE TO SEE THE CITIZENS OF MASSACHUSETTS DEALING WITH A BUDGET DEFICIT.
Polaris Venture Partners BUYS MIT RESEARCH AND MAKES BILLIONS. MASSACHUSETTS CITIZENS CAN'T EVEN GET GOOD HEALTH CARE. YOU CAN TELL THIS MAKES ME HOT!!!!!
IT IS ABSOLUTELY ABSURD TO THINK THAT THIS CORPORATIZATION OF UNIVERSITIES IS A GOOD THING FOR THE PUBLIC OR FOR ACADEMICS. MAKING MILLIONAIRES OF UNIVERSITY RESEARCHERS WHO ARE PAID BY TAXPAYERS AND ARE GETTING FREE LABOR FROM STUDENTS. RATHER THAN BASIC RESEARCH WHICH HAS ALWAYS BEEN THE VENUE FOR UNIVERSITIES, WE ARE NOW SEEING APPLIED PRODUCT ORIENTED RESEARCH THAT SHOULD BE IN CORPORATE R AND D.
HOW WILL THESE START-UPS, WHICH TO ME ARE JUST LIKE APPS ON MOBILE PHONES OR CABLE CHANNELS OFFERED BY A SATELLITE DISH.....HOW WILL THIS AFFECT OVERALL COMPETITIVENESS OF THE US WHEN BASIC RESEARCH FAILS TO PROVIDE THE NECESSARY GROUNDWORK? THESE PROFESSORS ARE MERELY EMPLOYEES OF THE CORPORATIONS SEEKING ANSWERS AND PRODUCTS.
THE PUBLIC DOES NOT GET THE PATENT.....THAT IS ALL PROPRIETARY. AS AN ACADEMIC I AM FINDING IT HARDER TO FIND OUT FOR WHAT TAXPAYER MONEY IS BEING USED AND WHAT RESEARCH IS BEING DONE. WE DON'T HEAR OF THE FAILED RESEARCH THAT IS FOOTED BY THE TAXPAYER AS CORPORATIONS WIN BIG WITH WINNING RESEARCH. WHO GETS ALL OF THIS SUCCESS AND MONEY? WHO HIRES THESE PROFESSORS THAT BECOME MILLIONAIRES?
THE PUBLIC WILL HAVE NO CONTROL ON THE TYPE OF RESEARCH IS DONE. WHEREAS THE STUDENT WOULD PURSUE HIS/HER INTERESTS WE NOW HAVE AN ASSEMBLY LINE...........VOCATIONAL CAREER COLLEGE.
VOTE YOUR INCUMBENT OUT OF OFFICE!!!!!!
Hatching Ideas, and Companies, by the Dozens at M.I.T.
By HANNAH SELIGSON Published: November 24, 2012 New York Times
HOW do you take particles in a test tube, or components in a tiny chip, and turn them into a $100 million company?
Dr. Robert Langer, 64, knows how. Since the 1980s, his Langer Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has spun out companies whose products treat cancer, diabetes, heart disease and schizophrenia, among other diseases, and even thicken hair.
The Langer Lab is on the front lines of turning discoveries made in the lab into a range of drugs and drug delivery systems. Without this kind of technology transfer, the thinking goes, scientific discoveries might well sit on the shelf, stifling innovation.
A chemical engineer by training, Dr. Langer has helped start 25 companies and has 811 patents, issued or pending, to his name. That’s not too far behind Thomas Edison, who had 1,093. More than 250 companies have licensed or sublicensed Langer Lab patents.
Polaris Venture Partners, a Boston venture capital firm, has invested $220 million in 18 Langer Lab-inspired businesses. Combined, these businesses have improved the health of many millions of people, says Terry McGuire, co-founder of Polaris.
Along the way, Dr. Langer and his lab, including about 60 postdoctoral and graduate students at a time, have found a way to navigate some slippery territory: the intersection of academic research and the commercial market.
Over the last 30 years, many universities — including M.I.T. — have set up licensing offices that oversee the transfer of scientific discoveries to companies. These offices have become a major pathway for universities seeking to put their research to practical use, not to mention add to their revenue streams.
In the sciences in particular, technology transfer has become a key way to bring drugs and other treatments to market. “The model of biomedical innovation relies on research coming out of universities, often funded by public money,” says Josephine Johnston, director of research at the Hastings Center, a bioethics research organization based in Garrison, N.Y.
Just a few of the products that have emerged from the Langer Lab are a small wafer that delivers a dose of chemotherapy used to treat brain cancer; sugar-sequencing tools that can be used to create new drugs like safer and more effective blood thinners; and a miniaturized chip (a form of nanotechnology) that can test for diseases.
The chemotherapy wafer, called the Gliadel, is licensed by Eisai Inc. The company behind the sugar-sequencing tools, Momenta Pharmaceuticals, raised $28.4 million in an initial public offering in 2004. The miniaturized chip is made by T2Biosystems, which completed a $23 million round of financing in the summer of 2011.
“It’s inconvenient to have to send things to a lab,” so the company is trying to develop more sophisticated methods, says Dr. Ralph Weissleder, a co-founder, with Dr. Langer and others, of T2Biosystems and a professor at Harvard Medical School.
FOR Dr. Langer, starting a company is not the same as it was, say, for Mark Zuckerberg with Facebook. “Bob is not consumed with any one company,” says H. Kent Bowen, an emeritus professor of business administration at Harvard Business School who wrote a case study on the Langer Lab. “His mission is to create the idea.”
Dr. Bowen observes that there are many other academic laboratories, including highly productive ones, but that the Langer Lab’s combination of people, spun-out companies and publications sets it apart. He says Dr. Langer “walks into the great unknown and then makes these discoveries.”
Dr. Langer is well known for his mentoring abilities. He is “notorious for replying to e-mail in two minutes, whether it’s a lowly graduate school student or the president of the United States,” says Paulina Hill, who worked in his lab from 2009 to 2011 and is now a senior associate at Polaris Venture Partners. (According to Dr. Langer, he has corresponded directly with President Obama about stem cell research and federal funds for the sciences.)
Dr. Langer says he looks at his students “as an extended family,” adding that “I really want them to do well.”
And they have, whether in business or in academia, or a combination of the two. One former student, Ram Sasisekharan, helped found Momenta and now runs his own lab at M.I.T. Ganesh Venkataraman Kaundinya is Momenta’s chief scientific officer and senior vice president for research.
Hongming Chen is vice president of research at Kala Pharmaceuticals. Howard Bernstein is chief scientific officer at Seventh Sense Biosystems, a blood-testing company. Still others have taken jobs in the law or in government.
Dr. Langer says he spends about eight hours a week working on companies that come out of his lab. Of the 25 that he helped start, he serves on the boards of 12 and is an informal adviser to 4. All of his entrepreneurial activity, which includes some equity stakes, has made him a millionaire. But he says he is mainly motivated by a desire to improve people’s health. TAXPAYERS ARE PAYING MIT SALARIES!!!!
Operating from the sixth floor of the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research on the M.I.T. campus in Cambridge, Mass., Dr. Langer’s lab has a research budget of more than $10 million for 2012, coming mostly from federal sources.
The research in labs like Dr. Langer’s is eyed closely by pharmaceutical companies. While drug companies employ huge research and development teams, they may not be as freewheeling and nimble, Dr. Langer says. The basis for many long-range discoveries has “come out of academia, including gene therapy, gene sequencing and tissue engineering,” he says.
He has served as a consultant to pharmaceutical companies. Their large size, he says, can end up being an impediment.
“Very often when you are going for real innovation,” he says, “you have to go against prevailing wisdom, and it’s hard to go against prevailing wisdom when there are people who have been there for a long time and you have some vice president who says, ‘No, that doesn’t make sense.’ ”
Pharmaceutical companies are eager to tap into the talent at leading research universities. In 2008, for example, Washington University in St. Louis announced a $25 million pact with Pfizer to collaborate more closely on biomedical research.
But in some situations, the close — critics might say cozy — ties between business and academia have the potential to create conflicts of interest. REALLY?????
There was a controversy earlier this year when it was revealed that the president of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center owned stock in Aveo Oncology, which had announced earlier that the university would be leading clinical trials of one of its cancer drugs. Last month, the University of Texas announced that he would be allowed to keep his ties with three pharmaceutical companies, including Aveo Oncology; his holdings will be placed in a blind trust.
“One question is how much is the commercial interest driving the research,” Ms. Johnston says. “I think that universities and the public policy makers are a little unsure where they think the balance should be. Does this opportunity skew the research agenda in terms of commercial application instead of the public interest?” She was speaking generally, and not commenting on any particular institution. CONFLICT OF INTEREST AND CORPORATE CONTROL? REALLY????
Dr. Langer says that there is no pressure at his lab for students to turn their research into a business. In fact, he says, about half of his students stay in academia. “I feel like one of our successes is that we trained so many great people who are now teaching at universities,” he says, adding that strict ethics rules are in place to prevent conflicts.
If they remain in academia, scientists at M.I.T. can still take equity stakes in the companies that their discoveries helped form. But they are barred from owning shares in any company that provides a research grant to their lab. They also cannot be executives of a company, although they can serve as paid advisers.
One issue at the crux of technology transfer is: How do universities protect the public good? THEY DON'T!!!!!
“M.I.T. always reserves rights for all nonprofit institutions, noncommercial research and education,” says Lita Nelsen, director of M.I.T.’s Technology Licensing Office, who has helped the Langer Lab file for hundreds of patents, close to 80 percent of which have been approved.
As an example, a controlled-release polio vaccine developed in the Langer Lab was financed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for use in the developing world. The foundation has also arranged to use, through Seventh Sense Biosystems, a rapid way to draw blood with a microneedle patch that could be used outside the confines of a medical center. (The approach is still in human trials.) The Langer Lab has also been working with the United States Army on a regenerative-tissue project that would help wounded soldiers from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
When a discovery is licensed at M.I.T., the university splits the profit three ways — among the department where the discovery was made, the university and the inventors. Who determines who these staff that will be millionaires or students who will go to work for these spin-offs will be?
“The founding principle in 1861, when M.I.T. was created, was to provide and support the industrialization of America. I always say we were founded on the principle of tech transfer,” says Susan Hockfield, who served as M.I.T.’s president from December 2004 until June of this year.
David H. Koch, executive vice president of Koch Industries, the conglomerate based in Wichita, Kan., wrote in an e-mail that “innovation and education have long fueled the world’s most powerful economies, so I can’t think of a better or more natural synergy than the one between academia and industry.” Mr. Koch endowed Dr. Langer’s professorship at M.I.T. and is a graduate of the university.
YES, many of the Langer Lab’s discoveries are helping to fight disease. But you can’t say that about a hair-thickening product that is made by a company called Living Proof. The product is sold at stores like Nordstrom and Sephora; Dr. Langer serves on the company’s board and holds a small equity stake.
How did he end up in the hair care business? That discovery actually came from a way to create new materials, the original intent of which was to treat prostate and ovarian cancer. Various chemical compounds, however, could be fished out from the discovery for many different purposes, including a hair thickening product.
Of course, not everything that comes out of the lab is a sure bet. A drug may not make it past clinical trials, or an alternative treatment may prove more effective.
Dr. Langer is still assessing the commercial potential of a project involving the vocal cords. He and Dr. Steven M. Zeitels, director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Laryngeal Surgery and Voice Rehabilitation, who has operated on singers like Adele and Julie Andrews, developed a gel that can be used on vocal tubes to make them more pliable. The gel had promising results in clinical trials on dogs, according to Dr. Langer. “I don’t know if it’s a company, though,” he says.
But he favors the kind of research that takes chances. As Dr. Bowen of Harvard says of Dr. Langer’s students: “They all come away thinking nothing is impossible.”
Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick signed the the state budget into law on July, 8, 2012, 10 days after lawmakers sent it to him on June 28, 2012.[1] FY2013 began on July 1, 2012, and with no budget signed into law, legislators passed a temporary spending measure to keep the state government operational.[2]
The state operates on an annual budget cycle and is currently in FY2013.[3] The state's fiscal year begins July 1.
Massachusetts has a total state debt of approximately $102,258,050,000, when calculated by adding the total of outstanding official debt, pension and other post-employment benefits (OPEB) liabilities, Unemployment Trust Fund loans, and the FY2013 state budget gap.[4] The total state debt is higher than the prior year's total of $97,940,986,000.[5]
Massachusetts's total state debt per capita is $15,522.96.[6]
Third Way corporate democrats are making these changes. It is why Maryland's policy is moving this way. It is not good for the democratic base because as we know, it is killing the middle/lower classes. THEY ARE TELLING US......TOUGH LUCK. WE ARE TELLING THEM.....NO YOU DON'T!!!!
O'Malley made his political career moving Maryland Forward as his campaign slogan shows. Below I want to show you where these pols want to take us. We see an article on MIT that is in full corporate swing and is the prototype of other public universities. You can see that they amount of public and student money that goes into these 'corporate programs' enriches a few within these departments and simply serves as a corporate laboratory. IT DOES NOT BENEFIT MOST PEOPLE AND IT COSTS ALL OF US DEARLY AS ACCESS TO A BASIC EDUCATION IS DISTORTED SIMPLY TO MEET THESE CORPORATE GOALS.
Why the French company of Veola in Maryland rather than growing our own industry-players? IN ORDER TO OPEN MARKETS IN OTHER COUNTRIES, THE US MUST ALLOW OTHER COUNTRIES TO OPEN THEIR MARKETS HERE. Are we getting good service or best practices? NO. We are simply opening a door for whomever O'Malley and the Maryland Assembly is promoting. So, Maryland taxpayers paid for all of the new buses and public transport vehicles tied to Veola......that is where our Transportation Trust fund went. Contracts will have those buses owned by whom at the end of the term?
VOTE YOUR INCUMBENT OUT OF OFFICE!!!!
BELOW YOU SEE KOCH BROTHERS AND TEA PARTY GOVERNOR SCOTT WALKER PROPOSING JUST WHAT IS ALREADY HAPPENING IN MARYLAND. UMBC IS A KOCH BROTHER'S DREAM. U OF M IS ON ITS WAY. IT IS EASY TO SEE HOW THIRD WAY CORPORATE DEMOCRATS ARE JUST AS CORPORATE AS ANY REPUBLICAN. IT'S HARD TO BE A DEMOCRAT WITH GOALS OF WEALTH AND GLOBAL CORPORATIONS LIKE THAT.
Wisconsin Governor Seeks Shift in Higher Ed November 19, 2012 - 4:20am Higher Ed
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, a Republican, announced in a speech Friday night at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California that he plans to propose major changes in the funding of technical colleges and University of Wisconsin System, The Wisconsin State Journal reported. Walker said that funding needs to shift so that higher education institutions are funded not on enrollment or even completion, but on completion in programs that train students for jobs that the state needs.
"We’re going to tie our funding in our technical colleges and our University of Wisconsin System into performance and say if you want money, we need you to perform, and particularly in higher education, we need you to perform not just in how many people you have in the classroom.
"In higher education, that means not only degrees, but are young people getting degrees in jobs that are open and needed today, not just the jobs that the universities want to give us, or degrees that people want to give us?"
"We’re going to tie our funding in our technical colleges and our University of Wisconsin System into performance and say if you want money, we need you to perform, and particularly in higher education, we need you to perform not just in how many people you have in the classroom.
"In higher education, that means not only degrees, but are young people getting degrees in jobs that are open and needed today, not just the jobs that the universities want to give us, or degrees that people want to give us?"
"We’re going to tie our funding in our technical colleges and our University of Wisconsin System into performance and say if you want money, we need you to perform, and particularly in higher education, we need you to perform not just in how many people you have in the classroom," he said. "In higher education, that means not only degrees, but are young people getting degrees in jobs that are open and needed today, not just the jobs that the universities want to give us, or degrees that people want to give us?"
Senate Minority Leader Chris Larson, a Democrat, said that Walker's plan sounds like "social engineering" that would force students to study "what industry wants" rather than what students want.
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THIS STUDY SHOWS THAT ALL OF THESE EFFORTS AT RECREATING SCHOOL STRUCTURES ARE NOT GIVING THE PUBLIC BETTER QUALITY........WHY IS IT THAT MARYLAND IS ALWAYS PLOWING AHEAD WITH POLICY THAT IS PROVING TO BE INEFFECTIVE IF NOT BAD FOR THE PUBLIC? THESE POLS ARE WORKING FOR GLOBAL CORPORATIONS......NOT YOU AND ME.
VOTE YOUR INCUMBENT OUT OF OFFICE!!!!
Study: Deregulated Universities Don't Have Better Outcomes October 18, 2012 - 3:00am Inside Higher Ed
A study released Wednesday by Policy Matters Ohio, a nonpartisan think tank, found that deregulating the governance structure of public higher education institutions -- a primary component of Ohio Governor John Kasich's higher education agenda -- doesn't have a significant effect on outcomes such as enrollment, graduation rate and the number of low-income students who graduate, but could lead to higher tuition rates, at least in the states examined. The study looked at three classes of institutions: "highly deregulated" (Virginia and Colorado), "partially deregulated" (Illinois, New Jersey and Texas), and "coordinated" (Kentucky, Maryland and Minnesota) and compared their outcomes to that of the nation and Ohio over the past decade.
"Given the track record of deregulation in other states, we have little reason to think that this approach will make tuition more affordable, increase access for low- and moderate-income students, or increase graduation rates," the report's authors write. "The primary factor affecting access and affordability is state support for higher education and state targeting of support for low- and moderate-income families."
The report's authors readily acknowledge that most of the deregulation took place about halfway through the decade and that confounding variables in the states selected might have an effect on the overall outcomes.
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WONDER WHY WE ARE NOT SEEING JOB CREATION AS ALL OF THIS TAXPAYER MONEY IS SUNK INTO THESE ECONOMIC TROUGHS? ALL OF THESE SCHEMES TO MARKET THE STATE ARE MET WITH A WORLD OF SIMILAR MARKETING AGENTS THAT ARE LOST IN THE HYPE. WE ALL KNOW HOW TO MAKE JOBS.......WE HAVE PEOPLE IN OFFICE BENT ON MAKING THOSE BUSINESSES INTERNATIONAL. WE WATCH AS O'MALLEY GOES TO INDIA AND ISRAEL ON ECONOMIC JUNKETS.......WE ARE PAYING FOR HIS NATIONAL CAMPAIGN SPOTLIGHTS
Report: DBED just a ‘marketing agency’ Posted: 9:00 am Mon, November 26, 2012
By Alexander Pyles
Daily Record Business Writer
Maryland’s economic development agency uses more resources to market the state than it does to develop the state’s job market, according to a report by an anti-tax group that is frequently critical of the O’Malley administration’s business acumen.
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WHO ARE THESE STUDENTS GETTING INTO ELITE SCHOOLS AND COMING AWAY WITH FUTURE CORPORATE JOBS ALL FINANCED BY FEDERAL AND STATE TAXPAYERS? LOOK AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS ARTICLE TO SEE THE CITIZENS OF MASSACHUSETTS DEALING WITH A BUDGET DEFICIT.
Polaris Venture Partners BUYS MIT RESEARCH AND MAKES BILLIONS. MASSACHUSETTS CITIZENS CAN'T EVEN GET GOOD HEALTH CARE. YOU CAN TELL THIS MAKES ME HOT!!!!!
IT IS ABSOLUTELY ABSURD TO THINK THAT THIS CORPORATIZATION OF UNIVERSITIES IS A GOOD THING FOR THE PUBLIC OR FOR ACADEMICS. MAKING MILLIONAIRES OF UNIVERSITY RESEARCHERS WHO ARE PAID BY TAXPAYERS AND ARE GETTING FREE LABOR FROM STUDENTS. RATHER THAN BASIC RESEARCH WHICH HAS ALWAYS BEEN THE VENUE FOR UNIVERSITIES, WE ARE NOW SEEING APPLIED PRODUCT ORIENTED RESEARCH THAT SHOULD BE IN CORPORATE R AND D.
HOW WILL THESE START-UPS, WHICH TO ME ARE JUST LIKE APPS ON MOBILE PHONES OR CABLE CHANNELS OFFERED BY A SATELLITE DISH.....HOW WILL THIS AFFECT OVERALL COMPETITIVENESS OF THE US WHEN BASIC RESEARCH FAILS TO PROVIDE THE NECESSARY GROUNDWORK? THESE PROFESSORS ARE MERELY EMPLOYEES OF THE CORPORATIONS SEEKING ANSWERS AND PRODUCTS.
THE PUBLIC DOES NOT GET THE PATENT.....THAT IS ALL PROPRIETARY. AS AN ACADEMIC I AM FINDING IT HARDER TO FIND OUT FOR WHAT TAXPAYER MONEY IS BEING USED AND WHAT RESEARCH IS BEING DONE. WE DON'T HEAR OF THE FAILED RESEARCH THAT IS FOOTED BY THE TAXPAYER AS CORPORATIONS WIN BIG WITH WINNING RESEARCH. WHO GETS ALL OF THIS SUCCESS AND MONEY? WHO HIRES THESE PROFESSORS THAT BECOME MILLIONAIRES?
THE PUBLIC WILL HAVE NO CONTROL ON THE TYPE OF RESEARCH IS DONE. WHEREAS THE STUDENT WOULD PURSUE HIS/HER INTERESTS WE NOW HAVE AN ASSEMBLY LINE...........VOCATIONAL CAREER COLLEGE.
VOTE YOUR INCUMBENT OUT OF OFFICE!!!!!!
Hatching Ideas, and Companies, by the Dozens at M.I.T.
By HANNAH SELIGSON Published: November 24, 2012 New York Times
HOW do you take particles in a test tube, or components in a tiny chip, and turn them into a $100 million company?
Dr. Robert Langer, 64, knows how. Since the 1980s, his Langer Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has spun out companies whose products treat cancer, diabetes, heart disease and schizophrenia, among other diseases, and even thicken hair.
The Langer Lab is on the front lines of turning discoveries made in the lab into a range of drugs and drug delivery systems. Without this kind of technology transfer, the thinking goes, scientific discoveries might well sit on the shelf, stifling innovation.
A chemical engineer by training, Dr. Langer has helped start 25 companies and has 811 patents, issued or pending, to his name. That’s not too far behind Thomas Edison, who had 1,093. More than 250 companies have licensed or sublicensed Langer Lab patents.
Polaris Venture Partners, a Boston venture capital firm, has invested $220 million in 18 Langer Lab-inspired businesses. Combined, these businesses have improved the health of many millions of people, says Terry McGuire, co-founder of Polaris.
Along the way, Dr. Langer and his lab, including about 60 postdoctoral and graduate students at a time, have found a way to navigate some slippery territory: the intersection of academic research and the commercial market.
Over the last 30 years, many universities — including M.I.T. — have set up licensing offices that oversee the transfer of scientific discoveries to companies. These offices have become a major pathway for universities seeking to put their research to practical use, not to mention add to their revenue streams.
In the sciences in particular, technology transfer has become a key way to bring drugs and other treatments to market. “The model of biomedical innovation relies on research coming out of universities, often funded by public money,” says Josephine Johnston, director of research at the Hastings Center, a bioethics research organization based in Garrison, N.Y.
Just a few of the products that have emerged from the Langer Lab are a small wafer that delivers a dose of chemotherapy used to treat brain cancer; sugar-sequencing tools that can be used to create new drugs like safer and more effective blood thinners; and a miniaturized chip (a form of nanotechnology) that can test for diseases.
The chemotherapy wafer, called the Gliadel, is licensed by Eisai Inc. The company behind the sugar-sequencing tools, Momenta Pharmaceuticals, raised $28.4 million in an initial public offering in 2004. The miniaturized chip is made by T2Biosystems, which completed a $23 million round of financing in the summer of 2011.
“It’s inconvenient to have to send things to a lab,” so the company is trying to develop more sophisticated methods, says Dr. Ralph Weissleder, a co-founder, with Dr. Langer and others, of T2Biosystems and a professor at Harvard Medical School.
FOR Dr. Langer, starting a company is not the same as it was, say, for Mark Zuckerberg with Facebook. “Bob is not consumed with any one company,” says H. Kent Bowen, an emeritus professor of business administration at Harvard Business School who wrote a case study on the Langer Lab. “His mission is to create the idea.”
Dr. Bowen observes that there are many other academic laboratories, including highly productive ones, but that the Langer Lab’s combination of people, spun-out companies and publications sets it apart. He says Dr. Langer “walks into the great unknown and then makes these discoveries.”
Dr. Langer is well known for his mentoring abilities. He is “notorious for replying to e-mail in two minutes, whether it’s a lowly graduate school student or the president of the United States,” says Paulina Hill, who worked in his lab from 2009 to 2011 and is now a senior associate at Polaris Venture Partners. (According to Dr. Langer, he has corresponded directly with President Obama about stem cell research and federal funds for the sciences.)
Dr. Langer says he looks at his students “as an extended family,” adding that “I really want them to do well.”
And they have, whether in business or in academia, or a combination of the two. One former student, Ram Sasisekharan, helped found Momenta and now runs his own lab at M.I.T. Ganesh Venkataraman Kaundinya is Momenta’s chief scientific officer and senior vice president for research.
Hongming Chen is vice president of research at Kala Pharmaceuticals. Howard Bernstein is chief scientific officer at Seventh Sense Biosystems, a blood-testing company. Still others have taken jobs in the law or in government.
Dr. Langer says he spends about eight hours a week working on companies that come out of his lab. Of the 25 that he helped start, he serves on the boards of 12 and is an informal adviser to 4. All of his entrepreneurial activity, which includes some equity stakes, has made him a millionaire. But he says he is mainly motivated by a desire to improve people’s health. TAXPAYERS ARE PAYING MIT SALARIES!!!!
Operating from the sixth floor of the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research on the M.I.T. campus in Cambridge, Mass., Dr. Langer’s lab has a research budget of more than $10 million for 2012, coming mostly from federal sources.
The research in labs like Dr. Langer’s is eyed closely by pharmaceutical companies. While drug companies employ huge research and development teams, they may not be as freewheeling and nimble, Dr. Langer says. The basis for many long-range discoveries has “come out of academia, including gene therapy, gene sequencing and tissue engineering,” he says.
He has served as a consultant to pharmaceutical companies. Their large size, he says, can end up being an impediment.
“Very often when you are going for real innovation,” he says, “you have to go against prevailing wisdom, and it’s hard to go against prevailing wisdom when there are people who have been there for a long time and you have some vice president who says, ‘No, that doesn’t make sense.’ ”
Pharmaceutical companies are eager to tap into the talent at leading research universities. In 2008, for example, Washington University in St. Louis announced a $25 million pact with Pfizer to collaborate more closely on biomedical research.
But in some situations, the close — critics might say cozy — ties between business and academia have the potential to create conflicts of interest. REALLY?????
There was a controversy earlier this year when it was revealed that the president of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center owned stock in Aveo Oncology, which had announced earlier that the university would be leading clinical trials of one of its cancer drugs. Last month, the University of Texas announced that he would be allowed to keep his ties with three pharmaceutical companies, including Aveo Oncology; his holdings will be placed in a blind trust.
“One question is how much is the commercial interest driving the research,” Ms. Johnston says. “I think that universities and the public policy makers are a little unsure where they think the balance should be. Does this opportunity skew the research agenda in terms of commercial application instead of the public interest?” She was speaking generally, and not commenting on any particular institution. CONFLICT OF INTEREST AND CORPORATE CONTROL? REALLY????
Dr. Langer says that there is no pressure at his lab for students to turn their research into a business. In fact, he says, about half of his students stay in academia. “I feel like one of our successes is that we trained so many great people who are now teaching at universities,” he says, adding that strict ethics rules are in place to prevent conflicts.
If they remain in academia, scientists at M.I.T. can still take equity stakes in the companies that their discoveries helped form. But they are barred from owning shares in any company that provides a research grant to their lab. They also cannot be executives of a company, although they can serve as paid advisers.
One issue at the crux of technology transfer is: How do universities protect the public good? THEY DON'T!!!!!
“M.I.T. always reserves rights for all nonprofit institutions, noncommercial research and education,” says Lita Nelsen, director of M.I.T.’s Technology Licensing Office, who has helped the Langer Lab file for hundreds of patents, close to 80 percent of which have been approved.
As an example, a controlled-release polio vaccine developed in the Langer Lab was financed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for use in the developing world. The foundation has also arranged to use, through Seventh Sense Biosystems, a rapid way to draw blood with a microneedle patch that could be used outside the confines of a medical center. (The approach is still in human trials.) The Langer Lab has also been working with the United States Army on a regenerative-tissue project that would help wounded soldiers from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
When a discovery is licensed at M.I.T., the university splits the profit three ways — among the department where the discovery was made, the university and the inventors. Who determines who these staff that will be millionaires or students who will go to work for these spin-offs will be?
“The founding principle in 1861, when M.I.T. was created, was to provide and support the industrialization of America. I always say we were founded on the principle of tech transfer,” says Susan Hockfield, who served as M.I.T.’s president from December 2004 until June of this year.
David H. Koch, executive vice president of Koch Industries, the conglomerate based in Wichita, Kan., wrote in an e-mail that “innovation and education have long fueled the world’s most powerful economies, so I can’t think of a better or more natural synergy than the one between academia and industry.” Mr. Koch endowed Dr. Langer’s professorship at M.I.T. and is a graduate of the university.
YES, many of the Langer Lab’s discoveries are helping to fight disease. But you can’t say that about a hair-thickening product that is made by a company called Living Proof. The product is sold at stores like Nordstrom and Sephora; Dr. Langer serves on the company’s board and holds a small equity stake.
How did he end up in the hair care business? That discovery actually came from a way to create new materials, the original intent of which was to treat prostate and ovarian cancer. Various chemical compounds, however, could be fished out from the discovery for many different purposes, including a hair thickening product.
Of course, not everything that comes out of the lab is a sure bet. A drug may not make it past clinical trials, or an alternative treatment may prove more effective.
Dr. Langer is still assessing the commercial potential of a project involving the vocal cords. He and Dr. Steven M. Zeitels, director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Laryngeal Surgery and Voice Rehabilitation, who has operated on singers like Adele and Julie Andrews, developed a gel that can be used on vocal tubes to make them more pliable. The gel had promising results in clinical trials on dogs, according to Dr. Langer. “I don’t know if it’s a company, though,” he says.
But he favors the kind of research that takes chances. As Dr. Bowen of Harvard says of Dr. Langer’s students: “They all come away thinking nothing is impossible.”
Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick signed the the state budget into law on July, 8, 2012, 10 days after lawmakers sent it to him on June 28, 2012.[1] FY2013 began on July 1, 2012, and with no budget signed into law, legislators passed a temporary spending measure to keep the state government operational.[2]
The state operates on an annual budget cycle and is currently in FY2013.[3] The state's fiscal year begins July 1.
Massachusetts has a total state debt of approximately $102,258,050,000, when calculated by adding the total of outstanding official debt, pension and other post-employment benefits (OPEB) liabilities, Unemployment Trust Fund loans, and the FY2013 state budget gap.[4] The total state debt is higher than the prior year's total of $97,940,986,000.[5]
Massachusetts's total state debt per capita is $15,522.96.[6]
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