Economic Contributions of Former TSR&TP Trainees

We conducted two studies that have examined the contributions of former TSR&TP trainees to economic development as assessed by a number of measurements. Our first study performed in 1998 analyzed responses to a survey sent to all of the former trainees from the first decade of the program (1985-1995) that we could locate. We reasoned that while many of the individuals funded between 1995 and 1998 might still be in training programs, a large percentage of the trainees from earlier years should have entered the workforce and their contributions could be evaluated.

In summer of 2000, we updated this survey by recontacting the original survey respondents for which we had current email addresses. We also completed a third survey of the economic contributions of UC faculty supported by the TSR&TP from its inception. The key findings are summarized below.

Original trainee survey

Our original study examined some of the economic contributions of a cohort of former trainees (predominantly graduate students, plus a smaller number of postdoctoral fellows) from the first 10 years of the TSR&TP (1985-1995).

Between 1985 and 1995 the TSR&TP funded a total of 661 students and postdoctoral fellows to work with more than 150 faculty members at the nine UC campuses. This original total population of 661 students gave rise to a survey population of about 400 of these former trainees who were actually located. Students who were undergraduates at the time of funding or were still UC graduate students were subsequently excluded from the survey. Attempts were made to locate former students with bad addresses on file whenever possible. Almost 400 former trainees were sent a questionnaire by email or by regular U.S. mail in 1998 at their last known address.

As of 1998, the 214 trainees that responded to our survey had the following characteristics: 46% were still in academia, some as postdoctoral fellows, reflecting the youth of this cohort. 36% were in private industry, and 15% in the public (government agency) sector. 68% were still in California, with 23% in other states and 9% abroad.

Follow up Trainee Survey

Our follow up survey, done entirely by email, was sent to a cohort of 144 of the respondents to the first survey for which we had correct email addresses in 1998, and was completed in the summer of 2000. Thus, we obtained additional information covering a subsequent two-year period in the professional lives of this subset of the original cohort.

Trainee Survey Results

The surveys asked a number of questions about economic contributions. In the less than ten years the 1998 survey respondents had been in the work force, they had received over $100 million in grant funds. The follow up survey found that about two-thirds of these original respondents had amassed an additional $30 million in new grants in the subsequent two years. If these respondents are typical of all former trainees (nearly 700 in all), the total "return on investment" would be about three times these numbers!

A table summarizing the results is below. A policy brief based on this study has been published by the California Policy Research Center; a more complete manuscript will be submitted for publication in the peer-reviewed literature.

Economic Contributions of TSR&TP-Funded Faculty

We also surveyed a total of 220 faculty that had received support from the TSR&TP and had current email addresses that we could locate. This was most of the faculty ever supported by TSR&TP; small numbers (about 10-12% of the total) were lost due to bad addresses, deaths, retirement, or moving from UC with no contact information. We received 143 responses, a response rate of 65%. We asked these faculty members questions about the impact the TSR&TP had on their individual careers and found the following responses for the survey population>

Impact on Faculty Careers

We also surveyed all of the UC faculty that had received support from the TSR&TP. We requested information about grants received as a result of TSR&TP seed funding, emphasizing that this was not to be all grants received by individuals, but just those that were received as a direct result of our seed funding of a new or expanded project. We also asked about the impact the TSR&TP had on their individual careers. A surprisingly large number of the survey respondents, about 60% of the total, told us their TSR&TP funding had a "significant impact" or was a "turning point" in their careers.

When we cross-correlated career impact with funding received from multidisciplinary collaborative grants, we found that the 60% of faculty on whom the TSR&TP had made a significant (or greater) impact accounted for more than 85% of the Center funding recipients. This observation supports the hypothesis that TSR&TP seed funding and lead campus components stimulate interdisciplinary research groups that are competitive for large extramural grants based on establishing a track record for collaborative research interactions.

Key Results from All Surveys

	Trainees		Faculty
	1998 Student Survey	2000 follow-up Survey	Faculty Survey
Reponse Rate	60%	80%	65% (143)
% Still in California	68%	57%	N/A
Total Grants Obtained	$100M*	$30M Additional	$316M***
Collaborative Center and Program Project Funding	N/A	N/A	$182.7M
Patents Obtained	42	10 Additional	4**
Patent Applications	106	14 Additional	7**
Peer-reviewed Publications	410	368 Additional	795
Technical Reports	192	183 Additional	150
Individuals Receiving Large (Center-type) Grants in Survey Interval	12(>$2M)	10(>$1M)	31
New Start up Companies	19	4 Additional	3
New Jobs Created	>200**	43 Additional	8**
Return on Investment	7.8	2.3 Additional	14

* For purposes of calculating rate of "return on investment" for this criterion, the TSR&TP received a total of about $16.5 million for all its expenses between 1985 and 1995. Somewhat more than 80% of this total went directly towards funding students and post-doctoral fellows. Thus, the trainees have already returned over 10 times the original investment in their training in terms of grants received, and this is a young cohort, on average, just 10 years after funding, so perhaps about 5-8 years into their careers. This is a very conservative calculation of return, in that we are assuming NO contribution by those who did not return a survey. If survey respondents were random and typical, this calculated return on investment by trainees of 10-fold (thus far) could be tripled to correct for those who did not respond. For the faculty return on investment calculation we used a different denominator, total TSR&TP budget through 1998 ($22.5 million), to better reflect true costs of this cohort.

** This is a lower bound estimate inferred from a question that asked whether the respondent had created any new jobs or received any patents. For the purposes of this calculation, we assumed no return on investment from the 35% of faculty who did not respond to the survey. Unless a specific number of new jobs was given in the answer to this question, we assigned a value of only 1 new job to an answer of yes.

*** Grants reported were limited to those seed-funded by the TSR&TP.