Roads, bridges, and U.

WHEN the United States counts its economic blessings in a downturn, the nation's research universities often top the list. These centers of innovation provide the United States with an edge in fields ranging from biotechnology to fuel cells. When the recession eases, investors will again place their bets on cutting-edge work from these institutions.

But what if one effect of the downturn is to sap the universities of money and weaken their ability to play their historic role?

The danger is real, particularly for public universities, which rely on support from cash-strapped state governments. Most states are required to balance their budgets. The new chancellor of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Robert Holub, is worried that state spending cuts will aggravate its $1.3 billion problem of deferred maintenance. To make sure that UMass and other state universities do not fall behind, competitiveness guru Michael Porter of the Harvard Business School recently suggested that campus facilities should receive some of the federal government's billions of stimulus funding.

In a Business Week article this fall, Porter noted that the United States ranks just 12th in the world in the percentage of its 25- to 34-year-olds with college degrees or greater educational attainment. The United States has made no progress in the last 30 years on this indicator, but other nations have.

Congress and the incoming Obama administration seem to agree on the need to spur the economy by granting the states money for ready-to-go infrastructure projects. Universities - not just roads and bridges - should be recognized as a crucial part of the economic infrastructure.