Harvard isn’t the only school in MA trying to be more industry-like and do more product development (see NNB story). According to an article in the Boston Business Journal this week, UMass is one Romney signature away from having a new subsidiary called The Corporation for Advanced Manufacturing in Massachusetts. Doesn’t sound very academic, does it?

This entity would work with biotech and nanotech companies to help them scale up the manufacture of their drugs and materials in development. While companies can already do this with various existing UMass manufacturing facilities (such as the bioprocessing center on the Lowell campus), business executives were apparently complaining that working out deals with the university to use these facilities was too time-consuming and bogged down in bureaucracy. The aim for this new entity is to make it easier and quicker for industry to get access to these UMass mini-plants.

Is it a good idea for a publicly funded university—one that is increasingly losing students to other states (see this Boston Biz Journal article from the same issue)—to spend millions of dollars to be essentially a contract manufacturer for industry? I would hope that UMass students at least get exposure and access to the facilities to learn about manufacturing, but I have a hard time imagining that the biotech/nanotech clients would be keen on having students hang around while they try to manufacture their proprietary materials.