industrial growth and enriched its political life. Indeed, foreign born workers accounted for 86 percent of then New England labor force growth from 1986 to 1996, compared with 35 percent nationally ("The state of New England: A fact sheet," 1999).
New England is a major center for higher education in America. The region has approximately 260 colleges and universities enrolling 795,000 students and employing 28,000 full time professors and associated faculty. Fully 25 percent of the students enrolled on the region's campuses travel to New England from other parts of the United States to attend college. New England colleges attract approximately nine percent of all foreign students in the United States, meaning about 40,000 foreign students a year. The region's universities conducted nearly $2 billion in research and development in 1997, which represented 8.3 percent of the U.S. total. New England colleges consistently capture more than ten percent of the patents awarded to institutions of higher education in the United States ("The state of New England: A fact sheet," 1999).
However, New England's lead in terms of enrollment is eroding. It reached a peak at more than 827,000 in 1992, then began to decline. New England's share of total U.S. college enrollment has decreased from 6.4 percent in the mid 1980s to 5.5 percent today. New England's share of R&D expenditures by all U.S. universities slid from 10.1 percent in 1983 to 8.3 percent in 1997, reducing the region's knowledge economy by billions of dollars over the period. Federal agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, NASA, and the departments of Defense, Energy, and Agriculture supplied 69 cents of every $1 that New England universities spent on research in 1997, compared with 60 cents nationally, and this dependence on Washington has hurt New England as relatively scarce federal R&D dollars are shifted toward the pol...