Andrew Doughman of the Nevada News Bureau filed this extensive story on how the state is losing, and has been for some time, not only leading faculty but also the grants, contracts and research enterprises they generate. As Michael Wixom has said, "we're losing real dollars in real time" by not supporting higher education faculty.

A former DRI researcher made this point quite directly: “It turns out, ironically, that the state of Texas has big economic problems as well,” Young said in a phone interview. “But there’s a very fundamentally different level of understanding in terms of what the university does for the economy and for the future of the state [in Texas]. You don’t really hear that a lot in Nevada.”

The hearing described in the story was held by the Senate Select Committee on Economic Diversification and Employment, chaired by Senator Rubin Kihuen. It heard testimony about programs in other states to invest public dollars in building areas of research focus at institutions of higher education to jumpstart economic development. Such programs have been successful in Virginia, Utah and elsewhere, in part because the state committed adequate resources not only to "steal top faculty" from other states but also to build a strong all-around faculty to provide a solid basis for advanced research and training.