Public Engagement

I have a deep conviction that public research universities are among the most valuable and most virtuous institutions in society. Therefore, I was dismayed to come across the book by Jennifer Washburn, University Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education (Basic Books, 2005). Washburn is the co-author of the famous 2000 Atlantic Monthly article, "The Kept University", about the UC Berkeley-Novartis deal.

I haven't read the whole book, but Washburn lays out her case—which is hard to dismiss out of hand—in the first few paragraphs of her Introduction:

• Converting "courseware" into salable property
• Allowing "whole academic departments to forge financial partnerships with private corporations, guaranteeing these firms first dibs on the inventions flowing out of their labs"
• Allowing the institutional name to be used for product endorsements
• Permitting faculty, particularly in the pharmaceutical and medical sciences, to review or endorse drugs in which they have a direct financial interest
• Restricting unduly the results of research in genetics and cell biology
• Investing in disciplines that promise to bring in new grants or private money, while diminishing support for the core liberal arts
• Emphasizing research at the expense of good teaching
• Spending money on technology transfer operations that are unlikely to yield a profit

Washburn freely admits that much of this behavior is driven by decreasing funding by the states, but she still lays most of the blame on the universities rather than society at large.

I think my discomfort with Washburn's case lies in three points:

• Although some of these ills are ubiquitous, particularly in the drug field, others are dramatic but uncommon examples.
• Research universities are paying more attention to ethical issues than they did a few years ago, as much because of internal faculty values as external scrutiny.
• The University of Minnesota has unquestionably had its lapses, but they are isolated incidents and have been promptly dealt with. We have strong and well-enforced policies against conflict of interest and exploitation of students, and we pay a lot of attention to quality of teaching in promotion and tenure considerations. We are recognized as leaders in ethics and responsible conduct of research training and policies, and in public engagement, but I don't think we're unique.