Aug. 4, 1998 Contact Ross West (541) 346-2060 Editor's Note: The full text of the AAU's "Employment Impacts of Academic R&D for Fiscal Year 1996" is available on the WWW at http://www.tulane.edu/~aau/FY96Employ.html. To receive a FAX copy of "Employment Impacts of Academic R&D for Fiscal Year 1996--Oregon," contact Ross West in the UO Office of Communications, (541) 346-2060. EUGENE--Federally funded research and development efforts at the nation's colleges and universities account for nearly 600,000 jobs, approximately 9,400 of them in Oregon, according to information recently published by the Association of American Universities (AAU). The largest single agency of federal support is the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which accounts for more than 300,000 jobs nationally--more than 3,500 in Oregon. Other sources for the federal funding include the National Science Foundation (NSF), responsible for 1,620 Oregon jobs; Department of Defense (DOD), responsible for 784 Oregon jobs; Department of Energy (DOE), responsible for 524 Oregon jobs; and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), responsible for 253 Oregon jobs. The information is contained in two new AAU publications: "Employment Impacts of Academic R&D for Fiscal Year 1996" and "Employment Impacts of Academic R&D for Fiscal Year 1996--Oregon." 1996 is the most recent year for which data are available. "Federal support for basic research is vital and it is a smart investment of our nation's resources," says Tom Dyke, UO vice provost for research. "Here at the University of Oregon, students and faculty are conducting basic research in diverse areas including the physical and biological sciences, social sciences, education and the humanities, which will contribute to the economy of Oregon and the well being of our citizens." The AAU report states that academic R&D is not, and has never been intended or presented, as a jobs-creating mechanism. "Academic R&D," the report explains, "makes a much more vital contribution to the nation's well-being--economic and otherwise--by advancing the frontiers of knowledge, by finding new cures and treatments for diseases, by helping to develop new technologies and by training future generations of researchers and teachers." Nevertheless, the economic impact analysis contained in the reports achieves a rough, conservative approximation of the immediate employment impacts of academic R&D by using state employment multipliers maintained by the U.S. Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis. The jobs figures in the reports include both full- and part-time jobs. They also include jobs supported directly on campuses and jobs supported indirectly outside campuses as institutional expenditures ripple through local and state economies. To put these jobs figures in some perspective, the latest available figures from the Commerce Department indicate that the following numbers of persons were directly employed in the following manufacturing sectors in the United States during 1996: tires, 64,800; logging, 84,800; communications equipment, 258,400; newspaper printing and publishing, 403,200; aircraft and related parts, 376,700; basic textiles, 576,400; and motor vehicles and equipment, 772,700. -30- #P-7406/Local,OrBus,PDX