Over the past three decades, U.S. science policy has shifted from decentralized support of small, investigator-initiated research projects to more centralized, block grant-based, multidisciplinary research centers. No matter one's take on the "revolutionary" nature of this shift, a major consequence is that university scientists, now more than ever, are subject to multiple and often conflicting demands. The purpose of this article is to examine the impact of having tenure on university scientists' consideration of these demands, particularly the demand for applied and commercially relevant research. For this study, the authors examine scientists who work in a particular type of university research center, one previously referred to as the "multidiscipline multipurpose university research center" (MMURC). MMURCs are interesting because they are required to be tenured or they are required to occupy a tenure-track position in an academic department. In this study the authors tested the general hypothesis that junior-level scientists will, relative to their tenured counterparts, devalue applied and commercially relevant research in favor of basic research, which the authors feel is justified by (a) some basic microeconomic reasoning and (b) implications of the above-discussed literature. (Contains 2 tables and 11 endnotes.)