The Greening of the University
Jacoby, Russell
From Ivory Tower to Industrial Park emember when the university was called an "ivory tower"? Bookish college presidents? Absentminded professors? Befuddled students? These types belong to a...
...We would holler and hoot if our governments— local, state, national—adopted practices of most universities: closed books, secret contracts and deals, confidential decisions on hiring and firing...
...To add insult to injury, foreign corporations already outperforming U.S...
...We have a zillion students—new crops graduate each year—adept at spreadsheets and risk management and fewer and fewer who know something of the Middle East or even American literature...
...MIT codified a system encouraging professorial cooperation with its industrial liaison program...
...What's different now...
...Like the homeless, these negative examples goad students to keep to the straight and narrow...
...If none of this signifies the end of civilization, it denotes the erosion of liberal education...
...He feared that "as the distractions of modern civilization multiply, as newspaper enterprises bring to our daily vision the conflicts and transactions of mankind .. . some corrective must exist, or there will be no more enjoyment in an intellectual life than there is in making money in the turmoil of the bourse...
...But they don't know them...
...Vocational education has always flirted with this danger...
...Students all "know" the burnt-out, bummedout, bitter victims of the sixties...
...Students are not learning, teachers not teaching, college presidents not presiding...
...University presidents look 286 • DISSENT The Greening of the University like bankers, professors like loan officers...
...The university exults that the program, which publishes a fat catalog of listings, places "at disposal of industry the expertise and resources of all the schools, departments, centers and laboratories of MIT...
...Their promotions and salaries depend on wider professional reputation, which in turn depends on publications, conferences, disciplinary activities...
...the reality that sustains them crumbles...
...Otherwise you might end up shelving books...
...From the University of California, Berkeley comes an illuminating tale...
...the predecessors knew or thought they understood everything at their schools...
...Thinking needs— yes...
...A sister or a parent or an uncle...
...an ivory tower...
...More than two...
...To what extent is the "ivory tower" turning into an industrial or research "park...
...In a fifteen-year period, business and management majors have doubled, mainly at the expense of history, philosophy, and English...
...What is the impact of these corporate arrangements on university life, especially on undergraduate teaching...
...Exxon funded MIT eight million dollars for research in combustion...
...They were more than administrators and fund-raisers...
...The money gushed forth...
...Twelve...
...Horowitz tells of a student whose feelings echoed many...
...As the first generation of children of college-educated parents, they "fear slipping" from the parental economic plane...
...Once upon a time "Made in Japan" spelled junk...
...In several cases, after developing a drug with federal funds, a faculty member founded a company to market SPRING • 1991 • 289 The Oreenhte of the University it...
...Careers are made by grants, recognition, and publications...
...The financial clout of some schools has not been completely ignored: the antitrust division of the Justice Department has opened a new price-fixing investigation...
...James S. Fairweather, a Pennsylvania State professor who studies industrial-corporate links, comments that formerly faculty debated "whether they should be involved with industry...
...Where are their commitments...
...after all, this is the school of management and business...
...The University of Washington put together a 2.3 milliondollar package, which includes labs, to snare one biochemist...
...course offerings resemble managerial training programs...
...This undeniable truth, however, can also be an excuse...
...Americans have long been suspicious of useless learning...
...No more...
...Paul Gray, the president of MIT, touted the "Industrial Liaison Program" as an example of a program making America competitive...
...spend billions...
...A stack of Lester Korn's The Success Profile greets students, promising an "understanding" of "the six-figure profile" and the art of "selling oneself...
...W. H. Cowley, a historian of higher education, called the period 288 • DISSENT The Greening of the University of 1870-1910 the "Age of Titans," when strong presidents like Andrew Dickson White at Cornell, Charles W. Eliot at Harvard, Daniel Coit Gilman at Johns Hopkins, and William Rainey Harper at the University of Chicago, built their institutions...
...A high-resolution gas chromatography maspectrometer— a must for big universities— costs about $600,000...
...Course I'd never admit it publicly," confessed Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt to his son Ted, "fellow like myself, State U. graduate, it's only decent and patriotic for him to blow his horn and boost the Alma Mater—but as a smatter of fact, there's a whole lot of valuable time lost even at the U., studying poetry and French and subjects that never brought in anybody a cent...
...A live person never appears...
...The anxiety worsened...
...Every day we hear that the world rejects American goods as too expensive and shoddy...
...Invariably the answer runs, "Well, not really, it's someone I kinda heard about from friends of my parents . they were talking about some woman they had heard about . . . but...
...Like those people in a party who hardly look at you—they are looking elsewhere for someone flashier—the university may lose its soul as it searches for the action...
...A century ago when Henry Adams, scion of presidents, asked students what they could do with their education, he was told, "The degree of Harvard College is worth money to me in Chicago...
...A university geared toward careers, contracts, and antiwrinkle creams...
...Amen...
...With many of these deals, the commercial applications expressly guide research...
...The bank routinely rejected students who listed majors in the humanities, such as English, history or art...
...students loll about in the sun, studying for exams...
...The bank's basic rationale is that these students are less likely to repay debts because they will not land the high-paying jobs that go to business or engineering graduates...
...The 1986 and 1987 winners of Harvard's Levenson Award for Outstanding Teaching were both denied tenure...
...Next to several crinkly "Season's Greetings" is posted a "Making Money Work" clipping on investing prospects...
...Still, these students were taking Adams's course in medieval history, not portfolio management or business psychology...
...While this distance is always incomplete, sometimes nonexistent, still, learning depends on social insulation, a chance to blast through sedimented routine: reading through the night, ruminating in the day, and ignoring the obligations that saddle most of us...
...Often they are "the frightened sons and daughters of the middle and upper middle class who fear downward social mobility...
...for a fee MIT provides access to professors and their research before publication...
...He had to be driven about, and during seminars he covered himself with cigarette ashes unless we interposed an ashtray...
...In the same way as American industry may suffer from too much profit making and too few reinvestments, American education may suffer from a surfeit of business, a dearth of learning-for-itself...
...it cannot be counted or appraised...
...Today no one charges that college presidents are too scholarly, that professors wander about in a fog, or that students know nothing about the "real world...
...Professor Allan Bloom tells us why in The Closing of the American Mind...
...I'm standing in the entrance hall of a UCLA building...
...Washington U's medical school is an intellectual resource we couldn't hire...
...it avoids recognizing that universities are abandoning undergraduates, relinquishing unprofitable teaching and reflection...
...and recruiting highprofile faculty requires big bucks...
...This is odd and instructive...
...Universities, retooled, are now plugged in...
...A sign stated "No Previous Credit History Required...
...We lack the dash and daring of a single skipper at the helm...
...A thousand studies have confirmed the decay of university instruction, a thousand committees have solemnly reaffirmed its importance, and nothing changes...
...Inspired teaching does not travel well...
...Meet with students...
...Yes, indeed...
...Wimpy faculty cater to hang-loose undergraduates who prefer pottery classes to Aristotle...
...Inasmuch as universities accept substantial federal funds, they are public—and should be accountable to the public...
...Someone you can talk to or even find...
...His new and nonremunerative field of study...
...An immense trade deficit beset the United States...
...Indignation, even surprise, would be misplaced...
...at Yale in 1985, out of 1,250 seniors, 400 sought positions at First Boston, the investment banking firm...
...The story is the same elsewhere...
...They must reveal where the tuition funds go and sources and spending of other monies...
...Bloom hardly alludes to a vast shift in student preferences, a rush to escape the humanities he cherishes...
...No one reading Plato nowadays...
...This is no longer possible...
...The American public loved "cold fusion," since its materials cost about $150, but most research projects need pricier equipment...
...in constant dollars Washington's commitment to research grew 12 to 14 percent a year, but the party ended in the seventies when increases dwindled to zero...
...Groups promoting rapport between business and higher education proliferate...
...Even the New York Times offered that it was not "philistine" to wonder whether the 215 scholarly articles on John Milton, 132 on Henry James and 554 on William Shakespeare that were published in 1987 were all important or necessary...
...News of a faltering American economy permeates the culture...
...the Forum simply wants more resources devoted to commercial research...
...its research and knowledge could make America hum again...
...Formerly, college presidents espoused an educational philosophy and reached the top by teaching or scholarship...
...In 1978 about eighty universities and multinational corporations set up the Business—Higher Education Forum, perhaps the most important of the new outfits...
...MIT boasts an industrial liaison program to which some three hundred corporations subscribe...
...instead we pace the automated captains's bridge of an ocean liner...
...Even this misleads, as if hostile buyouts or takeovers multiply...
...Numerous college presidents sit on the boards of major corporations...
...However, he flunked daily life...
...So much for the search for truth...
...The target...
...Students have not suddenly become more calculating...
...Until World War II, Washington paid little attention or money to universities except for agricultural research...
...The major schools, already public by virtue of funding, should be public in other ways...
...Recognition for outstanding teaching is such a stigma that one young nominee begged not to be considered...
...Washington University signed a $23.5 million contract with Monsanto giving the chemical company complete access to the university's School of Medicine...
...Steven Muller, president of Johns Hopkins, agrees with those who wonder, "Where are the great college presidents today...
...her older sister, a veteran of the sixties and a college dropout, works in a bookstore...
...no one wants to say—no one can say—that the 554th article on Shakespeare should not be published...
...More than quaint images have faded...
...A broader education— pure math as well as pure history—is necessary not simply because it makes for an informed population but a more skilled labor force—more inventive, flexible, thoughtful...
...Collusion on tuition and financial aid...
...it may spark some insights—now, or in fifty years...
...At the risk of nostalgia: as undergraduates a millennium ago we revered one professor for his rambling lectures and brilliant conversation...
...The universities are getting out of education just like US Steel got out of steel," concludes David Noble...
...the Hoechst—Mass General Hospital contract, for instance, specifies that participating faculty members must largely devote their time to research...
...Monsanto can delay publication of its universitysponsored research for years...
...Although corporate largess for academic research increases, the federal government still bankrolls the largest share...
...it's time, he counsels, to get tough with these kids and give 'em the classics...
...Perhaps, but we know from oil tankers that run aground or navy warships that shoot down civilian jets that large crafts also need decisive and alert leaders...
...In a new book, The Moral Collapse of the University, Bruce Wilshire, a Rutgers University professor, estimates that teaching counts at most for one-twentieth of a tenure outcome (the decision whether to hire a faculty member permanently...
...no one wanted them...
...and 80 percent of the faculty with the largest federal grants advise foreign corporations...
...And the students are applying...
...They go to college not to escape previous lives—a millennium ago, our greatest hope and desire—but to secure them...
...He hardly published or hobnobbed with colleagues...
...Perhaps some college presidents might explain...
...Students mastering desk typewriters lengthen unemployment lines...
...Today he'd probably be homeless...
...she was afraid the honor would impede her career...
...It is clear," states Robert M. Rosenzweig, president of the Association of American Universities, "that many thoughtful people are beginning to place their hopes for improveSPRING • 1991 • 287 The Greening of the University ments in the competitive position of American business and in the health of university-based science in the growing collaboration between business and universities...
...The real issue may elude the numbers on contracts, profits, and deals...
...Their experiences are synthetic, debris from the mass media, vague gossip, distant accounts...
...Of course, it's cheaper to live at home—and there seems no reason not to...
...Moreover, these contacts often gut the free circulation of knowledge, essential to higher learning...
...A major in "American lit" does not spell a job, perhaps not even a credit card...
...The Monsanto contract with Washington University contains a secrecy clause...
...It's death...
...Corporations have little or no interest in undergraduate instruction...
...Paul Berg, a Stanford University molecular biologist, founded DNAX, which ScheringPlough purchased for twenty-nine million dollars...
...Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, a Smith College historian, reports that students view colleges simply as "a continuation of past study and preparation for professional school...
...It may be this: the remedy is the ailment...
...Yet to propose that universities directly abet American enterprise may be subversive— subverting education...
...On average, Washington pays for over 60 percent of university research—and sometimes much more, like 86 percent of the MIT research budget...
...They're not all speaking at once...
...Is she discussing course offerings or falling SAT scores with other board members...
...and strike deals with major corporations...
...neither do many professors...
...What does it mean for the university if contractual agreements are held with profit-making corporations...
...Citibank, American's largest banking company, set up a table on the UC Berkeley campus to sign up graduating seniors for a MasterCard or Visa Card...
...Twenty years ago, however, this would have been unfathomable, no matter the economic justification...
...Some have done quite well...
...Visit a corporation...
...For this reason, these students remain dependent on their parents...
...When was the last time a student said, "Well, I don't really want to work for a fast-track New York law firm like my friend's brother...
...As the Monsanto director of corporate research stated, "If we wanted to build up our research staff in-house we would have to hire people that would lead us to concepts superior to our competitors...
...Of course, the mercenary impulse among students is not new—or simply evil...
...These types belong to a distant, perhaps mythic, past...
...In addition to these highly visible agreements, other university-corporate relations multiply...
...The issue...
...Not true...
...Many believe it is fine, that the version (and vision) of higher education as an ethereal retreat deserves a death sentence...
...Does the future hold a devitalized university...
...Better science, research, training...
...Among the merits of a university," he stated, is "the cultivation of a spirit of repose...
...But they did...
...Inside, it is all business...
...Today the best-selling car in the United States is Japanese...
...I ask, "Are these casualties from the sixties people you know...
...The Forum describes itself as "created for the express purpose of . . . acting on issues shared jointly by American business and the nation's higher education institutions...
...today the university is more like an industrial park...
...New or old, the problem is this: too much practicality is impractical...
...He cites a Harvard spokesman lauding the contract inasmuch as both the university and Japan's Shiseido Corporation seek to provide "symptom-free normal skin of pleasing appearance...
...yet it afforded a modicum of refuge where faculty and students might think about "big" questions—humanity, social justice, art, the heavens above...
...the winter holidays are fast approaching...
...However, he had changed majors, from math to rhetoric, and was turned down...
...Links between corporations and individual faculty also thrive...
...How will "Philosophy from Hegel to Nietzsche" look on the application for the bank internship...
...The issue is not business schools, but the business takeover of medicine, humanities, and social sciences...
...The remedy...
...In the discussion students allude to older siblings or acquaintances who dropped out and now vegetate in dead-end jobs—if not worse...
...One survey of today's college experience finds little excitement or rebellion...
...Twenty years ago brings us perilously close to the "sixties...
...Meet on campus with a company...
...it's just that they have heard the news...
...q 292 • DISSENT...
...The Los Angeles Times discovered that the bank followed its standard procedure...
...Understandably, the scientists that provided the ideas, techniques and practitioners of genetic chemistry," commented Arthur Kornberg, a Stanford Nobel laureate, "are reluctant to be excluded from its financial rewards...
...Taxpayers pay for most of the laboratories, buildings, and salaries, but the monies earned go to private corporations...
...The main display case features a new book with no indication whether its author is a faculty member, a campus speaker, or just a hero...
...they have wrongly indicted the faculty or "relativism" or rock 'n' roll without looking at the larger 290 • DISSENT The Oreenins sloths University picture...
...Stanford came up with a million for one physicist...
...This outfit, the New Republic noted, "worked on the Texaco-Getty deal," where a handful of bankers earned a pleasant $125,000 an hour...
...As with many corporations, the university's greatest customer is the federal government...
...Forty years later, spurred by hot and cold wars, federal funds for university research exceeded three billion dollars...
...This "lesson" is passed along, but does it have any validity...
...They all nod...
...Since 1974, when Harvard signed a twelve-year, twenty-three million dollar contract for basic cell research with Monsanto, corporate-academic compacts have prospered...
...This financial support renders all universities public institutions, argues David Noble, a member of a Nader group, Coalition for Universities in the Public Interest...
...a "grim professionalism" dominates...
...not only the degree itself, but every course, must be subject to cost analysis...
...The know-how, the prowess, and the competitive ethos that signified America— what happened...
...Talk on the telephone to a corporation...
...There's more money elsewhere...
...they own vast tracts of real estate...
...Today career imperatives hardly allow nonutilitarian studies...
...Sounds good, but a House subcommittee chaired by Representative Ted Weiss discovered that 45 percent of the subscribers to the program are foreign, largely Japanese, companies...
...they must divulge how much private consulting and research their faculty does, and what this means for teaching and education...
...They must disclose the contracts they hold and the dual and triple positions as educators and directors of corporate boards...
...Elite universities...
...Administrators, faculty, students have become market enthusiasts...
...Doubtful, since most will go unread—and are intended only to be listed and indexed...
...With federal blessing, the universities and corporations found solace in each other...
...To a man," writes Cowley, "they studied higher educational history, observed European practices first-hand, and proposed plans for meeting the rapidly changing educational requirements of the nation...
...many return home after college, an unexpected phenomenon...
...Do corporate contracts and contacts mean a slackening commitment to education...
...Such clauses are standard in corporate-funded university research...
...Who is running the outfit and where is it heading...
...employ millions...
...But Muller offers a reason: size and complexity of the university...
...we finally reach the civil rights SPRING • 1991 • 291 The Greening of the University movement and antiwar protests...
...a historical "lesson" is fabricated...
...We have to watch that American universities do not go the way of American electronics and steel corporations: out of business as they forget their business, education...
...I am teaching a class on twentieth-century America...
...he was pulling down big money—he had it all—and died at 39 playing racquetball...
...companies benefit from the federal research...
...Compared to those who came after him, however, Butler appears as a committed educator...
...Individuals are simultaneously full-time professors and company vice presidents or chairmen...
...Yet it's hardly news that all is not well on campuses...
...Sheila Slaughter, a University of Arizona professor, who has studied the Business—Higher Education Forum, concludes in her book (The Higher Learning and High Technology) that education or teaching hardly matters to this outfit...
...Now the issue is what percentage they should get...
...One student, a math major and already a reputable holder of Visa, applied for a MasterCard...
...Washington pared its university funding as Japanese nightmares visited corporate executives...
...and the universities received support for their big-ticket labs and star faculties...
...Americans prefer Japanese cars or German coffee grinders...
...In a new book, How Harvard Rules, John Trumpbour reports that Harvard's Mass General Hospital signed its largest contract with a Japanese corporation establishing "a 100member staff Cutaneous Biology Research Center dedicated to researching the production of anti-wrinkle creams, sun tanning lotions, and baldness cures...
...Hoechst, a West German chemical corporation...
...this is where computer-driven stocks flit about taking advantage of slight price fluctuations, a Harvard pastime for a number of years...
...Conservatives have rightly sensed something has gone amuck in higher education...
...He laments that "none of us is a great leader, none the present voice or conscience or inspiration of higher learning...
...by 1989 Mass General held over forty major corporate contracts...
...Pressure to publish accelerates the decline of teaching...
...Do more casualties date from the sixties than, say, from the fifties—the early heart attacks, suicides, and breakdowns...
...For instance, Hannah Grey, president of the University of Chicago, is on the board of directors of ARCO, as well as J. P. Morgan and Morgan Guaranty Trust...
...The corporations tapped into the knowledge they desperately needed...
...Ever since Joseph Wharton gave $100,000 to the University of Pennsylvania, business schools have proliferated...
...Did they all advance knowledge...
...As Douglas Greenberg, a vice president of the American Council of Learned Societies, observes, this may be due to the fact they are not "educational leaders" but managers, lawyers, and accountants occupied with endowments, corporate deals, and cash flow...
...teaching specific skills may render a student useless when the job changes, as it always does...
...Down the hall a career placement office shelves loose-leaf binders stuffed with resumes and corporate information...
...Two points...
...In 1985, out of almost one million bachelors' degrees awarded, one-quarter, or 230,000 students, received B.A.s in business and management— compared to 6,000 in philosophy and religion...
...Go directly to jail...
...The Wall Street Journal concluded that "the Ivy League schools are part of a price-fixing system that OPEC might envy...
...To whom do they answer...
...To be unfashionable, inasmuch as the ivory tower represented a partial insulation from the wider society, we need it more than ever...
...the husband does odd jobs...
...Especially in the last fifty years the universities entered the big league...
...Newspapers report anxiety-provoking, if unfathomable, findings: the United States lost the lead in major technological innovations or "the patent balance" turned negative...
...MIT even has a Tokyo office facilitating the sale of its research...
...An instrumental education did not arise overnight...
...Sounds good, but is it true...
...His only virtue...
...Yale, Washington University, and other schools struck corporate deals...
...If this is the case, why should corporations paying only a small portion of research costs walk off with exclusive licensing agreements...
...A century ago, Daniel Coit Gilman, one of the "titan" college presidents, reflected on the role of the university...
...To be sure, the ivory tower was neither ivory nor a tower...
...Secretary," reads a typical classified, "xlnt opportunity .. . WordPerf & Lotus...
...In 1940 American universities spent a total of 30 million dollars for scientific research...
...Today college presidents are becoming indistinguishable from CEOs...
...Seventy years ago Randolph Bourne satirized Columbia's President Butler as President Butcher, a front man for conservative financial interests...
...Today's university compares to yesterday's as an aircraft carrier to a sailboat...
...The proliferating contracts raise a troubling question: are public resources subsidizing private gain...
...A cry to make America competitive echoes through the land...
...Federal research, commented Weiss, "is being sold to foreign companies at bargain prices...
...Several studies conclude that faculty in high-demand technical fields spend too little time with students...
...At first it seemed like a passing nervousness...
...Censorship is hardly the remedy...
...He taught and inspired generations of students...
...All concur that the university should play a role in this "mission...
...American goods were lousy...
...Outside, the scene resembles the fantasy of American higher education...
...American self-confidence suffered...
...Or from today...
...In the best sense, they became social prophets...
...Cornell established a Biotechnology Institute supported by Eastman Kodak, General Foods, and Union Carbide...
...In 1982 Harvard's teaching hospital, Massachusetts General, entered a seventy million dollar contract with A.G...
...It's happening...
...Making America more competitive...
...For the younger sister, her friends, and the entire family, the moral was evident: conform...
...Harvard commands a four billion dollar endowment, which is a lot of coin to play with—and Harvard plays...
...To be known as an effective teacher can even damage a career, as it may imply a scientific laxness or excessive interest in students...
...Upstairs the Executive Program (and its Executive Lobby) offers pricey courses for senior management on competition in a global environment...
...Study and reflection require distance from the daily pressure of jobs, dollars, and family life...
...With one or two exceptions they do not intervene forcefully on educational issues...
...Of course, college presidents have always been tempting targets for critics...
...In fields like molecular biology, corporate affiliation, which can take the form of stocks or part ownership, has become the norm...
...After the festivities everyone drove home in their Japanese cars—and sobered up watching Japanese-built televisions or VCRs or exercised with Japanese "Walkmen...
...Depending on the extent of contact, faculty receive points worth financial perks...
...Analysts of Wall Street instability indict program trading and index arbitrage...
Vol. 38 • April 1991 • No. 2
