When the UA student government sponsored an April concert featuring Jay-Z, they sold less than 7,000 tickets — not even enough to cover the rapper’s six-figure fee. The original plan had been to use leftover concert revenue for scholarships, but instead the event lost more than $900,000.

An editorial in The Daily Wildcat, UA’s student newspaper, called the concert’s loss a result of arrogance and blind optimism.

Perhaps, as organizers suggested, the event was undersold because of the economy. In the end, a financial disaster like this is especially controversial because of the implication — students playing with other student’s money don’t always spend it well. No one in the UA student government had a direct financial stake in the event, which was financed through an agreement with the university’s bookstore.

When someone spends money that isn’t theirs, they might, or tend not to, spend it efficiently. If I’m using a credit card from work, my lunch will probably be less frugal than if I were paying out-of-pocket. And when any government spends money, the people making decisions might not have the same incentive to spend wisely. It’s not their money.

The magic of the marketplace ends at some point, and government performs well or better than anyone else at many functions. Ditto for the private sector.

At ASU, our university model embraces the importance of the market. It is ASU — a behemoth state institution, and one of the largest American universities — that is carving a path for public-private partnerships at the university level. This all comes down to putting one’s money where their mouth is: Involving the private sector means bridging the abilities of a for-profit company with the strengths of a well-funded public sector giant.

To maximize its impact as a research university, ASU needs private sector involvement at virtually every level, especially in areas like research and development. A university by itself isn’t quite in the business of putting a certain product on the market, but the right company is — a working relationship between the two is in everyone’s best interests.

From the Biodesign Institute’s collaborations with medical companies to media giant Gannett Co.’s partnership with the journalism school’s New Media Innovation Lab, public-private partnerships that help bring ASU’s research and developments to market are common across the university. (Full disclosure: I’m a journalism student.)

ASU’s Skysong project, a 1.2 million-square-foot mixed-use facility in Scottsdale, fosters partnerships between academia and business and aims to commercialize university research by lessening the barriers between the two spheres.

In October, ASU partnered with a German solar energy testing company to begin a Tempe-based, for-profit venture that looks to form one of the most sophisticated solar power testing facilities in the world.

Behind this was the ASU Foundation, a nonprofit arm of the university, which functions as a fundraising manager and an entrepreneurial platform, taking ASU innovations to market.

The New American University model’s emphasis on entrepreneurship and corporate sector partnerships is the role ASU should be playing as a research university. The private sector can be the real test for virtually any product — if it works, will someone invest in it?

Reach Matt at matt.culbertson@asu.edu