← Previous Post: | Next Post:

 

Money: It’s all good.

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.

Margaret Soltan, April 17, 2013 8:26AM
Posted in: professors

Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=39642

2 Responses to “Money: It’s all good.”

  1. Daniel S. Goldberg Says:

    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.

  2. Bernard Carroll Says:

    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.”

Comment on this Entry

UD REVIEWED

Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times

George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil

It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo

There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub

You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog

University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog

[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal

Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University

The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog

Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages

Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway

From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law

University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association

The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog

I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes

As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls

Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical

University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life

[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada

If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte

Archives

Categories