Mona Olsen is assistant director of George Mason’s small business development center. She said her program and others through the Mason Enterprise Center give students an opportunity to work directly with businesses while also cultivating relationships with companies that may then become “great sources of donations and great funders of programs.”
“There’s not only an intellectual giving back, but financially as well,” Olsen said.
A new revenue stream: rent
Other universities may follow suit with incubators, said Frank Ganis, a general partner at the consulting group Gilfus.
“Even if there was no innovation whatsoever, just the fact that they can collect rent from companies brings a new revenue stream to the university,” he said. “Hopefully they will have innovation and receive more in return than simply rent.”
Universities say they’re developing academic programs and business initiatives in response to local employers’ demand for workers with specific skills — and to accommodate the increasingly entrepreneurial business culture in the region.
It’s no accident they’re coming to fruition at a critical time for colleges and universities. Although the value of endowments at the nation’s universities rebounded somewhat in 2010 — returning an average of 11.9 percent, compared with 2009’s negative 18.7 percent return — levels are still down in the long term, according to the National Association of College and University Business Officers, which collects data from 850 U.S. colleges and universities. Three-, five- and 10-year returns remained below the level needed for the long term after taking into account spending, inflation and expenses, the association’s January report on education endowments found.
Meanwhile, charitable contributions dropped 0.6 percent in 2010 compared with 2009, when adjusted for inflation, according to the Council for Aid to Education.
“There’s no federal bailout for colleges and universities,” Ganis said. “They’re very aggressively taking matters in their own hands.
“Schools have realized that bake sales, car washes, 5k races or even the annual alumni campaign is just not enough,” he added.
If a job materializes, so much the better
Last semester, University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism began working with Patch, AOL’s hyper-local news site, to offer a course for college juniors and seniors to produce print, video and photo content for Patch’s suburban Maryland coverage in exchange for class credit and a small stipend for travel costs. There’s no guarantee Patch will hire the students upon graduation, but the collaboration does open the door for career opportunities.
“The idea is students should be people who have an interest in covering community news,” said Penny Fuchs, the professor who teaches the course. “If they do really well and click with Patch editors and Patch feels like they have a love connection, they’re free to offer them jobs. But that’s never a promise ... It’s simply a class and if Patch wants to offer a job, so much the better.”
Amy Kovac-Ashley, the Patch regional editor who spearheaded the partnership (and a former editor and producer at The Washington Post), said pairing up with young journalists could plant the seed to one day develop a new model for the business of journalism.
“Because Patch is so new, we’re really introducing them to one of many new ventures out there,” she said. “It’s good for them to see the different kinds of models and understand the entrepreneurial side of journalism. Five years from now, we could look to them to come up with whatever the new [model for journalism] will be and exposing them early on to what the new things are now is a good way of sparking their creativity.”
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