Higher Learning and Higher Profits: The Privatization of America's Research Universities

The North Carolina American Association of University Professors Annual Conference

Higher Learning and Higher Profits: The Privatization of America's Research Universities

Jennifer Washburn, Fellow, New America Foundation

Public Lecture, 7 p.m., Friday, April 4, at UNC-Chapel Hill’s FedEx Global Education Center auditorium. Reception to follow.

Washburn, author of “University, Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education” (Basic Books, 2005), carefully examines the public-private research partnerships that university officials from California to North Carolina have extolled as not just inevitable, but desirable.

From the $500 million that BP announced it will give to University of California, Berkeley to lead the largest academic-industry research consortium in history, to Harvard’s recent research collaboration with the pharmaceutical giant Merck, large-scale agreements with industry are increasingly common.

Such partnerships, Washburn warns, deserve careful public scrutiny and open debate. That rarely occurs.

Universities argue that such agreements are critical because of funding gaps wrought by changes in the federal and state funding of research, and that such agreements benefit research and technological achievement. But Washburn warns that such deals can be short-sighted.

“The question is, do we want our universities to focus on short-term, commercially viable research, or do we want them to continue doing research that is on the frontier, that is going to lead to the next generation of technological breakthroughs?” Washburn asks.

Washburn’s research examines the commercial transformation of American higher education over the last 25 years, and the effect this is having on disinterested research, education, and the free flow of public knowledge. Her articles and opinion pieces have appeared in a range of publications, including The Atlantic Monthly, New Scientist, The Washington Post, The Nation, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, Discover, Mother Jones, and the Journal of Commerce, among many others.

North Carolina State Conference of the American Association of University Professors and the UNC-Chapel Hill AAUP Chapter are co-sponsoring this free public lecture as part of the spring conference of the NC-AAUP. Faculty, academic professionals, and graduate students are also welcome to attend workshops on Saturday, April 5. Those workshops will include an examination of North Carolina universities and their relationships to foundations and corporations.

For more information, directions, or to register for Saturday, April 5 workshops, visit http://www.nc-aaup.org .

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Cat Warren, NC-AAUP President
Assoc. Prof., North Carolina State University
Website: http://www.nc-aaup.org
Email: ncaaup@rtpnet.org