The Hindu Business Line : Universities are too important to be surrendered to dictates of the market

IF YOUR kid has finished school and is now entering university, you probably have new worries to lose sleep over. What may rank low on your anxietylist is corruption in places of learning and policy somersaults, because most of us take these as given, right from entrance to exit.

But Jennifer Washburn's University Inc. from Basic Books (www.basicbooks.com) is on a different track; it discusses how commercial forces have transformed every aspect of academic life in the US. And the shock begins right from the dust-jacket: "Universities are acting more and more like for-profit factories, while professors are behaving more like businessmen. Secrecy is replacing the free flow of basic knowledge, university funds are shifting from humanities to more commercially lucrative science labs, and the skill of teaching is valued less and less."

Do you know that academic administrators refer to students as `consumers', and education and research as `products'? Or that "many have eagerly sought to convert `courseware' into intellectual property that can be packaged and sold over the Internet" and whole academic departments are forging financial partnerships with companies "guaranteeing these firms first dibs on the inventions flowing out of their labs"?

Are you aware that universities "invest their endowment money in risky start-up firms founded by their professors", run venture-capital funds, and encourage faculty members "to commercialise their research"?

The author traces these declines to the late 1970s when the US was pushed to respond to competition from Japan and other countries. "A powerful nexus of political, economic, and industrial forces" got at work to push universities closer to private industry, and transform themselves into "engines of economic growth". As a result, what matters are publications, prestige, and grant money, writes Washburn. The message of the administration is clear about what it thinks as important in academia. "Forget about teaching. Forget about broadening young people's minds. Whatever you do, don't spend a lot of time on that. It's a waste of time." Are these the education values we want the universities to embrace, asks the author.

"The point at which we look to nothing but demand to determine what a university should offer is the point at which the market becomes the enemy of excellence," is an insightful quote from Lynne Rudder Baker. Markets, per se, aren't bad but it would be wrong to presume them to be so perfect that they may be permitted to penetrate areas formerly governed by other considerations, reasons the author.

She argues that in a knowledge-driven economy it is all the more important that undergraduates receive not narrow vocational training but a broad-based foundation — "an education that sharpens the students' intellectual faculties, their curiosity about the world, and their ability to think critically and creatively".

With technology and the state of knowledge in almost all disciplines changing so rapidly, the most valuable skill, according to the author, is "the capacity to learn and grow intellectually throughout one's lifetime".

In a section on `the true value of academic science' the book cites the late 1980s and early 1990s work of Partha Dasgupta and Paul David, prominent economists at Cambridge and Stanford respectively. Their series of essays explained the need to keep academic and industrial research cultures distinct. The most important difference between the two cultures is not that of `basic' and `applied'.

Contrary to popular belief, a lot of scientific inquiry, be it in academics or industry, does not fit neatly into either of these two, one learns. "Instead, it falls into a hybrid realm of `use-oriented basic research', known as Pasteur's quadrant, a term coined by Donald Stokes," informs Washburn. The two economists, Dasgupta and David, had pointed out that the socio-economic rule structures under which the research takes place, and what the researchers do with their findings are what matter, and had exhorted that society needed "both communities firmly in place".

A chapter titled `the republic of science in turmoil' speaks of a problem "worse than the problems of enforced secrecy and publication delays": Manipulation of manuscripts and suppression of unwelcome research by corporate sponsors to serve commercial interests. "One survey of major university-industry research centres in the field of engineering found that 35 per cent would allow corporate sponsors to delete information from papers prior to publication," mentions Washburn. There are also instances of corporate interference taking the form of `intimidation and harassment'. The weak-hearted may skip the paragraph on how clinical trials get short shrift. Every year, three million volunteers participate in about 50,000 clinical trials in the US, and one reads in the book about instances of "serious deficiencies in the oversight system" designed to uphold the trial standards. The author cites cases where doctors relaxed eligibility criteria for patient enrolment in trials, cooked up data, and abdicated responsibilities to untrained staff. "In one case, bodily fluids that met certain lab values were stored in an office refrigerator, ready to be substituted for the urine or blood of patients who did not qualify for studies," is a quote from a 1999 story in the New York Times.

There is a multi-fold increase in the number of private physicians outside the university setting, it seems, even as the industry is anxious not to lose "an estimated $1.3 million every day it is delayed in winning FDA drug approval". Alarmingly, "the drug industry has resorted to paying doctors financial incentives ranging from $1,000 to $6,000 for each new patient recruited". Universities are also turning guinea pigs because administrators try to lower per pupil cost by engaging more part-timers, adjuncts and contingent professors. Though highly dedicated these faculty members lack the resources such as office space and administrative support, points out the author. Unlike the tenured ones, the part-time faculty gets judged by students rather than by professional peers, so "there is a strong incentive for them to go easy on their students". At the top too, there is rot, because "university presidents are chosen on the basis of their ability to raise money and their close ties to the corporate sector".

Unlike a suit that can be easily inspected for how well it fits, and how well it is made, the quality of pedagogy is more illusive and challenging to evaluate, rues Washburn. "Assessments of teaching and learning can generally be made only when the process is going on, or decades later, when the actual benefits of higher education to the individual (employment, higher lifetime wages, and other achievements) and society (enlightened citizens and higher productivity) are realised," she adds. The final chapter makes a fervent plea that higher education be appreciated "not only for its potential use value but for its intrinsic worth". The university is simply too important a public institution to be surrendered to the narrow dictates of the market, declares Washburn, signing off with a quote of Richard Hofstadter that the ultimate criterion of the place of higher learning will be "the extent to which it is esteemed not as a necessary instrument of external ends, but as an end in itself".

An enlightening read.

Economics@TheHindu.co.in

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