Priority number one for new UW–Madison chancellor Rebecca Blank, according to John Torinus:

There is a growing concern that part of the state’s laggard economic performance can be put at the doorstep of its flagship campus. The massive taxpayer inputs to that powerhouse campus don’t seem to match the outputs.

Put succinctly, the state has been losing GDP share for four decades or more. And it’s not getting better. The state ranks in the bottom ten year after year in job and business creation. …

Those graduates need jobs, and that comes from business creation. Even the jobs on the public side depend on business creation, the ultimate source of supporting tax dollars.

When the economy lags, businesses cut back on job creation, but cuts often follow on the public side not long afterward. That’s true almost everywhere, except in Madison where the public ranks grow in good times and bad times, under Democratic governors or Republican governors.

Maybe it’s that bubble around Madison that saps the urgency for growing the economy. Even there, though, the Madison economy hasn’t kept up with othr metro areas that are home to major research universities. …

Among her initiatives could be these:

• Focus the campus on entrepreneurship in the mode of Stanford, Utah and MIT. We pale in comparison. Academic R&D, patents and licenses are great, but the payoff for citizens comes from business creation and the resulting job creation. Make the effort statewide.
• Engage foundations affiliated with the UW in business startups. The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation gave her a leg up, a starting point, last week by teaming with the state pension fund to launch a $30 million venture fund for IT startups. Great. But what about other foundations, like the UW–Madison Foundation with more than $2 billion in assets? Other foundations also could make alternative investments in the intellectual property of the state.
• Lead the way back to the Wisconsin Idea. The time-honored state concept of pulling together the state’s best experts on different public policy issues should appeal to Blank, whose academic and government career centered on public policy. Since [former UW System president Katherine] Lyall and Gov. Tommy Thompson, that methodology has withered. Instead, cocooned governor staffs have dominated policy making. Organizations like Competitive Wisconsin have had to step into the gap.
• Engage the private sector, standard operating procedure at Stanford, Utah and MIT. Take a page from UW–Milwaukee Chancellor Mike Lovell, who is getting that interaction into high gear. UW–Madison lags other Big Ten universities on industry-supported research.
• Do a strategic study of the various departments, centers and institutes on the campus. Many of the centers that should be leading the thinking about the economy and driving innovation are invisible. What is the role of UW– Extension, for example? Where are the La Follette Institute and the Center on Wisconsin Strategy? We need a replacement for the late Don Nichols, who led pieces of economic thinking about Wisconsin.
• Use public policy expertise to look at the under-managed benefit structure for university employees. Tens of millions of dollars could be saved for better purposes if public employees were on the same kinds of plans as private sector employee. That’s where the money is. Don’t complain about budgets until you have done so. FYI: that can be done while IMPROVING health care.