NATIONAL CIVIC REVIEW, vol. 87, no. 2, Summer 1998 © Jossey-Bass Publishers 163

Public-Policy PartnershipsBetween Universities and Communities

Michael Cortés

When civic and community groups—and the foundations that support them—address public-policy issues, should universities be part of that effort? Myanswer is an enthusiastic yes! Let me illustrate why with a couple of examples.

Examples of Policy-Relevant Research at Universities

There is growing awareness of the rapid growth of our Latino population. Bythe middle of the twenty-first century, one out of four people in the UnitedStates will be Latino.1 Why the rapid growth? Most public officials, civicgroups, philanthropists, reporters, and voters would say the primary reason isimmigration. But demographers who study Latinos know better. The primaryreason for the rapid growth is above-average birthrates among Latinos whoreside in the United States.2 This important bit of knowledge is overlooked inthe debate over immigration, bilingual education, very high dropout ratesamong Latino schoolchildren, and other relevant questions of public policy.

In another example, if we ask those same civic leaders about the mainproblem posed by the growing Latino presence, they are likely to reply thatLatinos are not learning English and assimilating into U.S. society fast enough.Again, peer-reviewed scholarship at universities tells a different story. Assimi-lation does occur, and it is hazardous to Latinos’ health! Studies that comparefirst-, second-, and third-generation Latino immigrants have produced dis-turbing findings. When social indicators such as health, crime, school dropoutrates, and unemployment are compared, the grandchildren of Latino immi-grants are worse off than their less-assimilated grandparents. Again, this rela-tively unknown research has important implications for public policy making.

These examples of research on Latinos illustrate a much broader problem.Many fields of scholarship at today’s universities produce findings of potentialuse to people who make or influence public policy. University faculty who cre-ate new knowledge through research are potential partners in the civic net-works that develop around specific policy issues. Faculty are already in the

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business of informing, through research and teaching. Why shouldn’t univer-sities help bring knowledge to bear in policy debates, so that policy makersmight be better informed? Potential consumers of university research includepolicy makers who face tough decisions, and the civic leaders and organiza-tions who influence those policy makers.

What can we do to get researchers and civic leaders together? Like somany other problems, the answer lies in building collaborative partnershipsacross different sectors of society.

Partnerships with Faculty Can Be Difficult

Unfortunately, building collaborations between academics and the civil sectoris not easy. I admit, professors (like me) can be hard to deal with. Here arethree reasons why.

Universities Usually Discourage Faculty Involvement in the Community.University executives often commit their institutions to being good citizens inthe larger community. But faculty at a good research university cannot affordto take that commitment too seriously. Incentives for faculty at public researchuniversities involve contract renewal, tenure, promotion, and raises. Alloca-tion of these rewards is based on competitive evaluations conducted by otheruniversity faculty and administrators. Evaluation tends to focus primarily onthe amount of research published in specialized, peer-reviewed academic jour-nals. Time spent presenting and explaining research to audiences outside theivory tower hardly counts at all. Faculty face an incentive system that dis-courages involvement in policy making and community problem solving offcampus.

Professors’ Political Naïveté and Inexperience Makes Politicians Skepti-cal. Not all professors blindly conform to university incentive systems. Manyof us try to disseminate our research results off campus, as a service to thelarger community. Unfortunately, when trying to use research to help peoplewho make or influence policy, university faculty often do a poor job.

Before I became an academic, I worked in Washington, D.C. One of myfrustrating experiences there was observing the testimony of professors at Con-gressional hearings. Their testimony was often too theoretical. Professors’ abil-ity to think through the practical implications of their research often seemedvery limited.

The vast majority of academics are not trained to analyze public policy.University researchers ordinarily focus themselves within their own narrowspecialties. As professors, we typically have limited political or administrativeexperience outside the academy. Consequently, the advice we give, althoughbased on good research, is often politically naïve. Small wonder that peoplewho make or influence policy are sometimes skeptical about academic experts!

Civic Sector Resources Are Limited. University incentives for faculty arenot all bad. Peer review is essential for maintaining the quality of faculty

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research. In addition, some faculty are rewarded for conducting appliedresearch or providing advice that benefits decision makers off campus. How-ever, those decision makers are likely to represent business and industry, ratherthan civic organizations concerned about public policy. Faculty in many fieldsare encouraged by university administrators, or by their own pocketbooks, toseek research grants, contracts or consulting fees from government or the pri-vate, for-profit sector. Important segments of business and industry havelearned to make good use of faculty research, and faculty have learned to speakto those needs and interests off campus. The computer sciences, biotechnol-ogy, pharmaceuticals, and other fields can be lucrative areas for facultyresearchers and the firms that support them.

Those segments of private business and industry have the resources, flex-ibility, independent research capacity, and entrepreneurial spirit that allowthem to work with university research faculty for practical ends. Private, non-profit organizations in the civic sector lack the wherewithal to do likewise.Compared to business and government, nonprofit organizations rarely havethe necessary resources to support faculty efforts to be of service to the com-munity. Most nonprofits have little to offer researchers whose knowledge mightimprove public policy making or community problem solving.

A Strategy for Leveraging University Resources

Despite the difficulties just described, there are ways that universities, civicgroups, and foundations can help and encourage faculty to do a better job ofbringing research to bear on current questions of public policy. Here are ele-ments of a strategy for doing so.

Create Multidisciplinary Centers Focusing on Specific Policy Areas. Afirst step is to get faculty away from their usual peer networks now and then.Faculty should be encouraged to cross the boundaries that usually separatespecialists in different fields, disciplines, professions, departments, and cam-puses. Universities, funders, and civic groups can work together, to bring mul-tidisciplinary faculty groups together to focus on public-policy problems facingoff-campus communities. Each multidisciplinary project or center should bedevoted to a particular type of policy problem or community endeavor. Fac-ulty should not be asked to quit their day jobs, by abandoning ongoing peer-reviewed research and teaching. But they should be given more opportunitiesto collaborate with specialists in other fields, to address community concerns.Multidisciplinary groups can often do a better job of addressing communityissues than individual faculty working within the confines of their own acad-emic discipline.

Strengthen Researchers’ Policy Orientation. A second step would be toprovide in-service training to faculty, to help them become more useful to peo-ple off campus who make or influence public policy. Special seminars couldhelp multidisciplinary faculty groups learn more about use of research in the

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public and civic sectors. Those seminars could also help faculty formulatefuture research projects (and present the results of scholarly research) in waysthat people off campus find more useful.

Introduce Peer-Reviewed Publications for General Audiences. A thirdstep is to provide new publication opportunities for faculty. The multidiscipli-nary projects or centers I propose could issue publications written for generalaudiences, without the narrowness and jargon that renders so many academicpublications useless for wider audiences. The seminars proposed here couldhelped faculty write for nonspecialists, including policy makers, the press, vot-ers, and civic groups. Editors could also be hired to help out. Unfortunately,universities typically do not offer strong incentives for faculty to write for gen-eral audiences. But the problem of incentives could be eased somewhat by hav-ing those publications peer reviewed.

Initiate Two-Way Faculty-Community Interaction. Fourth, we can pro-mote faculty-community interaction, so that folks off campus can learn moreabout what faculty have to offer. Events organized by the multidisciplinary pro-jects or centers could bring university researchers together with their poten-tial new customers in the civic sector. The focus of those meetings would beon new knowledge that is policy relevant. Meetings also give faculty an oppor-tunity to learn more about the communities researchers presume to advise. Afew faculty members might even adjust their research priorities, as a result oftalking with civic leaders and community groups outside their usual world ofscholarship.

Target External Subsidies. Research universities usually expect their fac-ulty to divide practically all of their time between research and teaching, withjust a little time reserved for administration and service activities. The incen-tive system discourages faculty from spending much time on advice and pub-lications for the civic sector. One way to free up faculty time for that purposeis to temporarily reduce their teaching loads. The incentive system describedearlier often discourages research intended for publications outside faculty’sprimary discipline. But university incentive systems also encourage faculty to“buy out” of teaching a course now and then, especially if money to hire a tem-porary substitute instructor comes from funders outside the university. Thiscreates an opportunity for foundations who want to see more researchers workwith civic groups and decision makers on problems of public policy. Founda-tions can establish small-grant programs for faculty teaching buy-outs. Grantswould free up more faculty time for research and dissemination in forms thatcivic groups can use, without damaging faculty members’ university careers.

The Latino Research and Policy Center

The strategy described here provides a way for universities, civic groups, andfoundations to work together to make scholarship more useful to the peoplewho make or influence public policy. My colleagues and I at the University of

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Colorado at Denver hope to put that strategy to the test in the coming year.The new Latino/a Research and Policy Center (LRPC) on our campus wasformed in 1997. We plan to employ each element of the proposed strategy, asfollows.

The university established the new center at the request of the ColoradoHispanic Institute. This institute was a leadership development program startedten years earlier by Latino community and civic leaders, public officials, andthree institutions of higher education. The W. K. Kellogg Foundation providedmajor financial support.

Founders of the institute had long hoped to create a Latino think tank, inaddition to the leadership development program funded by Kellogg. Theirhope was to sponsor new research and analysis addressing issues concerningLatino communities. However, the Colorado Hispanic Institute never managedto establish the think tank idea or get it funded.

Finally, in 1997, the institute’s board asked the chancellor of the univer-sity’s Denver campus to create the think tank as part of the university. The pro-posal fit nicely with the chancellor’s “new urban university initiative,” and shegranted the institute’s request. Thus, the new LRPC was created, with localcommunity and civic support and seed funds provided by the university.

The new center is multidisciplinary. Thus far, forty-five faculty from anumber of Colorado institutions of higher education have affiliated themselvesthrough the center’s Faculty Research Associates program. Among them areprofessors of education, sociology, business, history, medicine, anthropology,architecture, ethnic studies, public administration, political science, engineer-ing, and other fields. These academics retain their regular faculty appointmentsin their primary academic units, while participating in projects and events atthe center addressing the problems and aspirations of Latino communities.

Only one of the faculty associates has formal training in public-policyanalysis. However, a larger number of faculty research associates have workedwith community organizations, service agencies, political coalitions, or otherforms of advocacy or service in Latino communities. We hope to find funds toprovide in-service training seminars, to help strengthen the policy orientationof faculty’s research and dissemination activities.

Some of the publications planned by the center speak to other academics.Others will be written for general audiences in the surrounding community. Apeer-review process makes LRPC publications a more acceptable outlet for fac-ulty whose careers depend upon publication of their own research.

Two-way interaction between faculty and the surrounding community isprovided by the center’s Community Associates program. Community associ-ates include elected and appointed public officials, leaders of Latino commu-nity organizations and service agencies, labor leaders, businesspeople,professionals, and others with an active interest in Latino community concerns.The center’s newsletter, symposia, conferences, meetings, and social events pro-vide opportunities for faculty-community interaction. Thus far, thirty-eight

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people have accepted invitations to become community associates, and moreappear likely to do so.

Funds are now being sought for a small grants program to pay for facultyrelease time, to increase their participation in center projects. Funds for a vari-ety of larger research projects are also being sought. Proposed projects featurecollaboration between faculty and community associates. Although we haveno plans to offer formal instruction for students, we do involve undergradu-ates and graduate students in research projects. In return for their assistance,we offer students opportunities to gain knowledge and firsthand experiencewith issues of concern to Latino communities.

Will our strategy succeed at building public-policy partnerships betweenuniversities and communities? It is too early to say. Hopefully, our new Centerwill show that when universities, civic and community groups, and founda-tions work together, we can do more to bring research-based knowledge tobear on policy decisions confronting the civic sector.

Notes

1. U.S. Bureau of the Census. “Facts for Hispanic Heritage Month.” Memorandum CB97-FS.10,Sept. 11, 1997.2. U.S. Bureau of the Census. Population Profile of the United States: 1995. Current Population

Reports, Series 23-189. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1995, p. 47.

Michael Cortés is assistant professor of public policy at the University of Colorado at Denver.ne short – Optimal –ine long –