For sale: US academic integrity, by Ibrahim Warde

For sale: US academic integrity, by Ibrahim Warde: "CONFLICTS OF INTEREST ON THE CAMPUS
For sale: US academic integrity
Private enterprise is much taken with education, especially the universities. In the United States the race to get hold of academic disciplines that bring in the money has already increased conflicts of interest between research and business. Under cover of a "marketplace of ideas," the logic of the market could turn academics into entrepreneurs and endanger the unity of our universities.
By Ibrahim Warde

In November 1998 the University of California at Berkeley signed a controversial agreement with Novartis, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant and producer of genetically engineered crops. In exchange for $25m to its Department of Plant and Microbial Biology (DPMB), the university would grant the firm first right to negotiate licenses on about one-third of the department's discoveries (including the results of research funded by state and federal sources). Novartis would also be represented on two out of five seats in the department's research committee, which determines how the money is spent.

About half of the faculty members of the College of Natural Resources, of which the DPMB is a part, expressed concern that the deal would erode Berkeley's commitment to 'public good research', and 60% feared it would impede the free exchange of ideas among scientists (1). California state senator Tom Hayden declared that the deal 'raises significant questions of whether biotechnology research primarily serves the interests of corporations and marginalises potential academic critics at the expense of free inquiry and unfettered research'.

Yet, by and large, the deal represents the new model of cooperation between corporations and universities. Since California's Proposition 13, which froze property tax and started a widesand started a widespread "tax revolt" in 1978, state funding for education has started to decline. Changes were afoot at the federal level, too. In 1980 the US Congress, concerned about declining productivity and rising competition from Japan, passed the Bayh-Dole act, which for the first time allowed universities to patent the results of federally funded research. Subsequent legislation further encouraged corporations to fund academic research - through tax breaks among other things - and universities to licence their inventions to corporations.

With the end of the cold war, universities suffered more public cuts. Thus in 1987 Berkeley, which was once funded almost entirely by the state of California, saw the share of public funding fall to 50% of its overall budget, and to 34% in 1999. Buildings erected in the 1990s, such as the one housing the business school, were financed exclusively by private donations. The Haas family (heirs to jeans makers Levi Strauss) was its most generous benefactor, and saw to it that the school bore its name. A number of major corporations endowed faculty positions. Even the dean holds the position of "Bank of America dean". The state-of-the-art building of the Haas School of Business is plastered with corporate logos and all its rooms - and even the tables and chairs - are adorned with plaques commemorating their donor - a company, an alumnus or a graduating class."