Our Views: Mindpower is where Louisiana ought to invest – The Advocate

Without the economic and scientific infrastructure necessary for innovation, it has continued to rely on the colonial development model of resource extraction, which is both unsustainable and largely responsible for its debilitating poverty and aid dependency, write Ameenah Gurib-Fakim and Landry Sign.

Theyre not talking about Louisiana, but the deeply economically troubled continent of Africa. The Brookings Institution scholars Gurib-Fakim is the former president of Mauritius pose a fundamental challenge not only for the African continent but also for Americas Bayou State.

Louisianas economy has been based on extraction, some of which was sustainable with good practices in agriculture and timber, for example. But the fabulous wealth and continuing benefits of oil and gas extraction and refining may not be sustainable in present forms in the 80 years ahead in this century.

And the phrase aid dependency really stings, as Louisiana has required much-needed federal aid after natural disasters, but also for day-to-day funding of medical care and other necessities for our relatively poor population.

What is the answer? No secret at all. The economic and scientific infrastructure necessary for innovation has been here for many years, since LSU and Tulane universities opened their doors in the 19th century.

Louisianas network of higher education institutions, public and private, require strong financial assistance from government to make research viable in a highly competitive world market for scientists and their knowledge.

No one is more aware of that than William F. Tate IV, president of LSU.

When The Advocate and The Times-Picayune convened a panel of state leaders to talk about the economy, Tate pushed research that can lead to new technologies and businesses.

He said higher education research leads to a roughly $600 billion impact on the U.S. gross domestic product annually. LSUs GPD output is about $6 billion each year.

But he noted that LSU is falling behind Southeastern Conference peers such as the University of Georgia and University of Kentucky in reaping the benefits of investing in research.

The newly installed president of the statewide system of LSU institutions, including its medical schools and the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, highlighted five areas for research investment: agriculture and biotechnology, cyber security, ocean and coastal science, carbon capture technology and cancer research.

Funding those five areas would really change what is happening here and really keep more people in this state to work, he said.

We dont know what should be the most urgent focus of research investment, but clearly outside fundingof philanthropists and more state government support is necessary above simply growing undergraduate enrollments for tuition dollars.

In a flush budget year, Louisiana is in a position to do more for research funding. Gov. John Bel Edwards proposed and the Legislature has received reasonable plans for a university faculty pay raises and boosted support for research institutions. But those investments have proven in the past to be too changeable, reduced as the budgets fortunes have waned.

If we want to play in the same league as states that have won the mindpower sweepstakes in the last century North Carolina and Texas as well as Georgia among them we shall have to invest in the knowledge economy consistently and heavily.

We need a strongly built foundation of our own economic and scientific infrastructure necessary for innovation.

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Our Views: Mindpower is where Louisiana ought to invest - The Advocate