Importance of Funding Innovation in Education

Back from Montana by way of St. Louis.  Daughter is in southwestern Alberta researching grizzly bears, Son is in his new house but summering in Chicago, and GrandDog is here visiting.  Whew!

With one child at UT and one graduated from A&M, I try to keep up with what is happening in the world of Higher Ed.  I'm glad to see the University of Texas receive a foundation grant that will allow them, along with other institutions of higher learning, to develop and implement cost-effective ways of increasing educational attainment and improving student success.  The Lumina Foundation has given the university and others a $745,000 grant to expand collaboration among higher education institutions, with the goals of improving educational access and increasing postsecondary completion rates.  
This is exciting, important work that should be done a larger scale.  I suspect UT would not be able to do this work without the grant, because in May, the Regents elected to freeze tuition for the next two years for in-state students, against the recommendation of UT President Powers.  Like K-12 public education, any innovation in education will happen only when funded from outside sources, because the current funding systems are only sufficient (and even that is arguable) to cover current delivery.  Fortunately, there are foundations that understand the critical role they have in fostering innovation and improving the "industry" of education by funding projects like these.  It's unheard of for a major corporation to not have a "research and development" department, but this is not something that our legislatures have agreed to fund in the educational arena (although they understand the critical importance of it as evidenced by the P-16 initiative).  As a result, we have school districts and colleges doing great jobs of educating the current crop of students with the current crop of teachers using current thinking and current tools, but not many are able to fund anything innovative.  As a result, what will education look like in 25 years?