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Can the Essential Nature of Universities Survive the Drive to Commercialize

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Universities, governments and industry: Can the essential nature of universities survive
the drive to commercialize? Simon N. Young
Author information Article notes Copyright and License information Having spent
40 years in universities, I have had sufficient time to consider some of the
idiosyncrasies, foibles and problems of these academic institutions. The purpose of this
editorial is to discuss the current state of university research and explain why I find some
aspects of the current situation disturbing. Changes that started during the second half
of the 20th century and that have continued into the 21st threaten to bring about
fundamental changes in the nature of universities. Some of the changes are
commendable, for example, the large expansion in the proportion of the population
attending universities, at least in the richer nations. Other trends are disturbing,
especially the increasing tendency of governments and industry to view universities as
engines for short-term economic gain. While universities certainly cannot ignore the
context in which they function and the needs of society, responding purely to short-term
economic considerations threatens to subvert the very nature of universities and some of
the benefits they provide to society. So what exactly is a university and what is its
purpose? I much prefer the Oxford English Dictionary definition of the word “university”
to some of the more utilitarian definitions in other dictionaries. The Oxford definition
reads, in part, “whole body of teachers and scholars engaged in the higher branches of
learning.” Thus, it is the community of faculty and students that is the essence of a
university. The higher branches of learning in which teachers and scholars engage have
2 important products: the educated minds that are essential for the well-being of society,
and new knowledge and ideas. Some of that new knowledge will enrich society by
producing economic growth, directly or indirectly, but the benefits of new knowledge go
far beyond economic gain. Universities have always been subjected to outside
influences. The oldest European university, the University of Bologna, has existed at
least since the 1080s. Some time before 1222, about 1000 students left Bologna and
founded a new university in Padua because of “the grievous offence that was brought to
bear on their academic liberties and the failure to acknowledge the privileges solemnly
granted to teachers and students.”1 The outside interference came from the Roman
Catholic Church, and, for several
centuries, Padua was home to the only university in Europe where non-Catholics could
get a university education. Both Bologna and Padua were student-controlled universities
with students electing the professors and fixing their salaries. However, in spite of
marked differences, there are similarities between what happened then and what is
happening today, with important outside influences — then the dogma of religion, now
the dogma of business — threatening to change the activities of the community of
teachers and scholars. The seeds of what is happening now were sown in the years
following World War II. Before the war the most important influence on a faculty member
was probably the departmental chair, who in those days had power to influence in an
important way what went on in the department. Nonetheless, a faculty member would
have had access to departmental resources and would not necessarily have required
outside research funding (although such funding was sometimes available from private

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foundations). The mechanism of funding research, and the amount of money available
for research, changed greatly in the postwar years. In 1945, Vannevar Bush's landmark
report to President Harry Truman, Science the Endless Frontier,2 had an important
influence on university research. In this report, Bush stated, “The publicly and privately
supported colleges, universities, and research institutes are the centers of basic
research. They are the wellsprings of knowledge and understanding. As long as they are
vigorous and healthy and their scientists are free to pursue the truth wherever it may
lead, there will be a flow of new scientific knowledge to those who can apply it to
practical problems in Government, in industry, or elsewhere.” Bush supported the idea
that the US government should provide strong financial support for university research,
but also supported the idea that the individual investigator should be the main
determinant of the topics for investigation, with statements such as “Scientific progress
on a broad front results from the free play of free intellects, working on subjects of their
own choice, in the manner dictated by their curiosity for exploration of the unknown.”2 In
the latter half of the last century, many countries adopted the model of granting councils,
which used a system based on peer review to distribute money for investigator-initiated
research. This model has been a great success, but it has also contributed to important
changes in universities. Much more money has been available to support
medical research, basic science research and engineering research than has been
available for the social sciences or arts. Thus, decisions about support for different
disciplines devolved from the universities to governments, who decided on the budgets
of their various grant-giving bodies. Also, individual researchers who were successful in
obtaining grants no longer depended as much on departmental facilities. In my opinion,
this not only weakened the power of departmental chairs but also decreased collegiality
within departments. With increased enrolments, as a university education became
accessible to a greater proportion of the population, and an increased need for
infrastructure for the larger student population and for complex research equipment,
administrators became more concerned about sources of funding and consequently
more detached from the faculty. There is always a tendency for senior academic
administrators to speak and behave as though they were the university (when of course
they are there to serve the community of teachers and scholars). This is of course a
normal human trait, no different from the tendency of politicians to forget that they are
elected to serve the people. However, this increasing detachment of senior university
administrators from the faculty has facilitated the erosion of collegiality within
departments and universities. The individual personalities of university faculty probably
also facilitated this change. I learned recently, when looking at the literature on
personality, that an inverse correlation between intelligence and conscientiousness has
been demonstrated in a number of studies (see, for example, Moutafi et al3). Thus, it
might be more than just my paranoia leading me to believe that the small proportion of
university faculty who lack conscientiousness and collegiality is larger than in some other
walks of life. The erosion of collegiality is not a matter of great significance, except that it
probably played a role in making researchers more open to the efforts of governments to
transform them into entrepreneurs. The most recent and possibly the most important
change in university research resulted from the push by governments to commercialize
the results of such research. In the United States, the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980
encouraged universities to license to private industry discoveries made with federal

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Universities, governments and industry: Can the essential nature of universities survive the drive to commercialize? Simon N. Young Author information ? Article notes ? Copyright and License information ? Having spent 40 years in universities, I have had sufficient time to consider some of the idiosyncrasies, foibles and problems of these academic institutions. The purpose of this editorial is to discuss the current state of university research and explain why I find some aspects of the current situation disturbing. Changes that started during the second half of the 20th century and that have continued into the 21st threaten to bring about fundamental changes in the nature of universities. Some of the changes are commendable, for example, the large expansion in the proportion of the population attending universities, at least in the richer nations. Other trends are disturbing, especially the increasing tendency of governments and industry to view universities as engines for short-term economic gain. While universities certainly cannot ignore the context in which they function and the needs of society, responding purely to short-term economic considerations threatens to subvert the very nature of universities and some of the benefits they provide to society. So what exactly is a university and what is its purpose? I much prefer the Oxford English Dictionary definition of the word "university" to some of the more utilitarian definitions in other dictionaries. The Oxford defini ...
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