Good golly, Miss Molly.
We heard about an interesting program today. It’s the U.S. Office of Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). The mission of EPSCoR is:
“to assist the National Science Foundation in its statutory function “to strengthen research and education in science and engineering throughout the United States and to avoid undue concentration of such research and education.”
Fun stuff. It wasn’t that long ago that the policy wonks were suggesting that Canada should divert all research funding to just five research-universities in Canada (hint: none in New Brunswick) and the rest of universities should just stick to teaching.
The Yanks have a statutory federal program specifically designed to “avoid undue concentration of research” in the big urban centres.