Whether it’s charity tax write-off luxury boxes in university sports arenas full of drunk local businesspeople, or pharma-sponsored institutes that produce pill-friendly research, or big oil-sponsored institutes (big oil money makes pharma money look sparse) whose directors live exactly like big oil executives, it’s all good. It’s all good for the American university, which after all has to support its operations somehow.
Local news reporters seem to think the University of Houston – ground-zero for big oil money – overlooks the unseemly greed of its oil-subsidized faculty. But these reporters are operating with an outmoded notion of what universities are. UH is fine with it.
April 17th, 2013 at 9:17AM
UD,
I have a degree from UH and am pretty familiar with the culture there, and I think the characterization of it as “ground zero for big money” is a bit off. Even though it is part and parcel of the state university system, is one of the most diverse campuses in the country, and educates an awful lot of underserved communities, the UT system is notorious for its parsimony WRT to the campus.
Of course, that relative lack of funds had been compounded by a number of management and leadership problems. And I have no doubt there is indeed oil money to be found here and there across the UH campus. But unless things have changed dramatically in the 5 years since I was last there, it is much more like other regional state universities across the nation in its being slowly starved of appropriations rather than awash in oil money.
There is indeed a campus that receives more than its fair share of such support, IMO, and it is the UT system, most notably Austin and especially A&M.
JMO.
April 17th, 2013 at 12:56PM
Here is President Eisenhower on the topic of big money and universities. That was over 50 years ago. Nowadays, just write in corporations alongside government. See here: http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/01/academic-industrial-complex.html
“…research has become … more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
… the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity…
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.”