Big Business Seeks to Control and Influence U.S. Universities

Academia is being auctioned off to the highest bidder. Increasingly, industry is creating endowed professorships, funding think tanks and research centers, sponsoring grants, and contracting for research. Under this arrangement, students, faculty, and universities serve the interests of corporations instead of the public in the process selling off academic freedom and intellectual independence.

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a number of programs serve corporate interests. One is the MIT's Industrial Liaison Program, which charges 300 corporations from $10,000 to $50,000 per year in membership fees. The fees buy the expertise and resources of MIT's departments and laboratories. Professors participating in the program can earn points towards professional travel, office equipment, and other prizes.

Although universities often claim that corporate moneys come without strings attached, this usually not the case. A British pharmaceutical corporation, Boots, gave $250,000 to University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) for research comparing its hypothyroid drug, Synthroid, with lower cost alternatives. Instead of demonstrating Synthroid's superiority as Boots had hoped, the study found that the other drugs were bioequivalents. This information could have saved consumers $356 million if they had switched to a cheaper alternative, but Boots took action to protect Synthroid's domination of the $600 million market. The corporation prevented publication of the results in the Journal of the American Medical Association, and then announced that the research was badly flawed. The researcher was unable to counter the claim because she was legally precluded from releasing the study.

University Presidents often sit on the boards of directors of major corporations, inviting conflicts of interest and developing biases that undermine academic freedom and interfere with the ability of the university to be critical or objective. For example, City University of New York Chancellor Ann Reynolds sits on the boards of Abbott Laboratories, Owens-Corning, American Electric Power, Humana, Inc., and the Maytag Corporation. Her $150,000 salary as chancellor is approximately doubled by what she gets as a board member. University of Texas Chancellor William Cunningham, after coming under public fire for conflict of interest, resigned his seat on the board of directors of Freeport-McMoRan Corporation, and cashed in his stock options netting $650,422.

While university presidents and chancellors gain from their corporate activities, industry and business are returned favors. University boards of trustees are dominated by captains of industry, who hire chancellors and presidents with pro-industry biases. New York University's board includes former CBS owner Laurence Tisch, Hartz Mountain chief Leonard Stern, Salomon Brothers brokerage firm founder, William B. Salomon, and real estate magnate-turned publisher Mortimer Zuckerman.

Federal tax dollars fund about $7 billion worth of research, to which corporations can buy access for a fraction of the actual cost. This is the largely the result of two 1980s federal laws which allow universities to sell patent rights derived from taxpayer-funded research to corporations encouraging "rent-a-researcher" programs.

The result of these changes has been a covert transfer of resources from the public to the private sector and the changing of universities from centers of instruction to centers for corporate R & D.

Student Researchers: Angie Yee, Katie Sims
Faculty Evaluator: Sally Hurtado, Ph.D.

Sources:

CAQ
Title: "Phi Beta Capitalism"
Date: Spring 1997
Author: Lawrence Soley

DOLLARS AND SENSE
Title: "Big Money on Campus"
Date: March/April 1997
Author: Lawrence Soley