Editorial: Rising star vs. lone star

Tuesday, April 11, 2006 | 7:23 a.m.

If a business increased its sales from $18 million to $95 million in 10 years, success would be an understatement in describing its growth. The figures given, though, actually represent the difference in research money attracted by UNLV between the years 1995 and 2005.

But UNLV's progress toward its goal of becoming a nationally known and respected research institution is not yet viewed as a success.

Certainly its progress is not a failure, either, but earning a respected reputation in the highly competitive world of university research requires more than a steady increase in grant money from private sources and the federal government.

A university must also receive a steady increase in research money from its state, and this is where UNLV is being let down. Nevada provides no money for research faculty.

This fact was brought out in the Las Vegas Sun on Sunday, in a story by reporter Christina Littlefield. The article pointed out that UNLV has been graduating more doctoral students, which is a standard common to top-level research universities.

But it doesn't have enough deans, professors, graduate students, nonteaching researchers, postdoctoral fellowships and articles published in respected journals to really crack the barrier separating midlevel research universities from those in the top tier.

If the state would fund full-time research positions, all of those areas would experience improvement. As it stands, with potentially top researchers having full teaching loads, most areas of research are too stressed for any national breakthrough.

Critics say UNLV should remain as primarily a teaching institution, but we see that as shortsighted. Research carried from idea to conception can create new opportunities for students and the whole state as patents are obtained and revenue shared. New businesses can spring up from breakthroughs in engineering, science, product development and even entertainment. Why not maximize UNLV's potential?

A major problem, as we see it, is that UNLV for the past decade has been going it virtually alone in trying to establish itself as a research university. But as a state university, its goal should not be separate from the higher-education goals of the Legislature.

We believe the state should share in UNLV's vision for its future as a research university.