Seva Gunitskiy
The notion of the University as a bastion of academic altruism is a myth. In an ethical sense, it's true that the ultimate goal of a university is the creation and public dissemination of knowledge. But today's public universities, faced with increasing research costs and declining federal support grants, do not exist in a wonder-land where research involving millions of dollars in potential licensing fees is given away at the door. More than ever, universities are as concerned with finding practical (and financial) applications for their findings as with the findings themselves. What effects this might have on the academic integrity of our University is a complex and serious question. To put it more provocatively: could we be naive puppets of corporate interests, here in this supposed sanctuary of impartial education?
The idea of practicality within the ivory tower is certainly nothing new. Thomas Jefferson believed that schools were not created apart from the real world, and thus it was only appropriate that the fruits of their knowledge should be applied to the real world as much as possible. But much of the nature of research has changed dramatically since Jefferson's time, infinitely increasing in its complexity and scope. Today's academic-corporate partnerships have the potential to create new and treacherous problems. For some, an unlucky turn of events within the system might even result in a jail sentence.
Peter Taborsky was only an undergraduate at the University of South Florida when he came upon the research breakthrough of his life, an effective method of removing ammonia from wastewater. Sensing the evident commercial utility of his discovery, Florida Progress Corporation, a local holding company that sponsored some of Taborsky's earlier research, filed proceedings to become the rightful owner of the method. The University of South Florida promptly joined in the judicial melee, suing Taborsky for stealing university research. After Taborsky was given a suspended sentence, he patented the findings anyway, was convicted of theft and ordered to serve two months on a chain gang. The case turned into a media debacle, and the Florida governor intervened with an offer of clemency, which Taborsky refused out of principle. While he was far from an innocent victim, and his spell at the chain gang is far from a usual scenario, it does underscore some concerns for corporate incursions into the academic sphere.
Horror stories of unhealthy intermingling between academics and corporations pop up in colleges across the country, and their scandalous aftermaths leave easy targets for anti-corporate liberals. Even the most disinterested college student can see why such partnerships are easy to frown upon. The very idea of furtive liaisons between a college administration and a monolithic corporation hints at clandestine meetings in dark rooms where people in dark suits devise conspiracies of Orwellian proportions. Notions of illegal experimentation on human subjects and falsified research do not require too much imagination from the standard conspiracy theorist, not to mention the more prosaic evils like a professor engaging in insider trading resulting from corporate research. The Securities and Exchange Commission, for instance, recently filed suit against a Columbia University neurologist Dale Lange for buying stock in a company that was about to release news of a promising new drug treatment. Lange conducted the clinical trials of the drug, and bought the company's stock just before it skyrocketed, leaving him with a $26,000 windfall.
The University of Michigan, in particular, is considered to be one of the most prestigious research facilities in the country, if not in the world. A closer inspection of corporate research policies is certainly warranted in an institution that has an annual research budget of very nearly half a billion dollars. It is certainly not my intention to lightheartedly discount suspicions of potential dishonesty-these problems certainly do exist, and they have been known to appear at even the most legitimate institutions of learning. At the same time, it is easy to fall into the rut of knee-jerk opposition to corporate-academic partnerships. We can begin by drawing some reasonable conclusions from objective facts-statistics on research spending.
In the beginning of 1997, federal funds for university-based research were projected to decline by 20 percent over the next five years. The anticipated shortage of funding left University administrators scrambling for cash. "It's not time to panic, but time to prepare to panic," said the Vice President for Research Frederick Neidhardt in an interview with The Michigan Daily. The scare of insufficient funds was such that it even managed to arouse a somewhat misplaced nationalist sentiment. "We are dealing...with our ability to defend ourselves as a nation," said local Congresswoman Lynn Rivers. "If we don't research on our own shores we will be outstripped by foreign countries."
Unsurprisingly, corporate sponsorship was one of the first places the University turned to for additional funds. One of Neidhart's responses to the cuts was to stress industry and private funds, saying that there was "room to grow" in these relationships. George Hartford, former Senior Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations, said that the "most prominent area where you could bolster your fundraising would be from corporations and foundations," a sentiment echoed by other officials in the department.
As it turned out, fears of a research budget deficit were unfounded. Even though the rates of growth in federal support for colleges across the country were decreasing steadily over the last decade, the University of Michigan was enjoying its biggest increases ever, setting record research budgets year after year. The budget rose from $458.5 million in 1996-97 to $491.5 million in 1997-98. The budget from last year very nearly hit the half-billion dollar mark, reaching $499.7 million dollars. In constant dollars, research expenditures increased by 31% over the last decade.
Despite the University's eagerness to expand industry relations, percentage of funding from corporate sources has stagnated over the past few years. (see table) During the 1997-98 year, when George Hartford was looking to boost the amount of corporate sponsorship, industry funding actually increased by less than a tenth of one percent. "The percentage has hovered around 7 or 8 percent for as long as anyone has the data," says Marvin Parnes, Executive Director of the Division of Research Development & Administration.
It appears then that corporations are not inevitably encroaching on us after all, at least judging from a cursory examination. But there are other concerns on the rise that cannot be measured in numbers, such as the contention over ownership of intellectual property rights for new discoveries.
The Bayh-Dohl Act of 1980 allowed Universities to place patents on research conducted with federal grant money. This controversial act allowed research results to become more marketable, opening up venues to industry licensing and boosting industry investment in university research. At the same time it has prompted some to ask if this policy amounted to a limitation on the free exchange and use of research results.
"Licensing of research does not restrict the free flow of information," argues Parnes. "In fact, the purpose of patenting is to make it public. It simply restricts the commercial use of the product. I think there's a lot of confusion around that issue."
"People need to protect their right to make money from some inventions," he continues, "or no one will invest in them. We guard very much against restricting knowledge. If there is ever a situation in which the question of intellectual property is somehow, in whatever way, undermining the missions of research and teaching, the missions prevail."
"The mission of the University is to generate and disseminate knowledge in the public interest," reads the Regent's Policy. "Essential to this mission are two fundamental principles: open scholarly exchange and academic freedom." To make sure these principles are upheld, the policy prohibits the University from entering into any agreement that would inhibit its ability to disclose the purpose or the results of research.
Yet the issue is not as simple as this seemingly hard-line stance on secrecy-right below these explicitly noble words is a short and vague proviso: "However, the policy does allow the University to accept...a classified contract if it can be accommodated without compromising the University's pursuit of its educational mission and if its purpose is clearly in the public interest." What exactly is included in this field of public interest remains unclear from the document, although the officials I spoke with told me this exception refers specifically to secret government research (a completely new set of controversies for conspiracy seekers.) Even assuming all corporate research results do end up being shared with the scientific community, corporations can delay the publication of data for up to six months while they consider the possibility of a patent, a policy that the Regents say they "accept with reluctance."
"We are balancing different societal needs," explains Parnes. "There is the question of how to balance the need for openness with the need for investment. You face opposing pressures. You have a tremendous interest from the government to make sure you commercialize. On the other hand, government wants us to be careful."
"We need to demonstrate that all this federal money that we are being given for researching is being put into use," says Parnes. Starting new businesses and licensing new technology are the primary ways of demonstrating that usefulness. New corporate investment often accompanies licensing agreements, which then allows the university to conduct research that would not otherwise be available, creating, at least in theory, a virtuous cycle. "In this way we can ensure that technology gets developed in a way that is useful," says Parnes. "But you are very careful when you write agreements that you don't do anything that will prevent the continuation of your faculty member's research."
"There has been a very strong, often controversial relationship between corporate America and academic America," says Jefferson Porter, Senior Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations. "The University has very strong safeguards to protect the academic integrity of its researchers." Sitting in a high-tech conference room atop the University's lofty Wolverine Tower, Porter outlined some of the problems that often accompany these collaborations. For instance, there is a constant concern that corporate money may influence the direction of research by "buying" professors to do their work for them, a notion that Porter rejects. Most often, he asserts, the relationships arise because of a mutual need-corporate sponsors facilitate research and provide money for explorations that would otherwise be unfeasible, while large universities like this one offer great access to basic research, a variety of professorial talent, and the ability to perform clinical trials.
"This university is not designed to just fill the research needs of a company," says Parnes. "For someone at the University of Michigan to take on research for industry, the research has to have some kind of academic value, it has to fit into the mission of the university."
There are cases when a faculty member gets too cozy with a corporation, and any further collaboration becomes a conflict of interest. Charles Thomas, a criminologist at the University of Florida, was fined $20,000 by the state ethics commission last year after it was discovered that he received consulting fees of $3 million from the private-prison industry while serving as a state advisor on prison policy. This University has set up several Conflict of Interest Committees to avoid a similar fiasco. A peer-review group, the Committee appraises faculty-corporation collaborations and decides whether they may present an unethical situation.
"The faculty is pretty sophisticated, and they know what is acceptable or not acceptable," says Parnes. "There is very little gain to a university of our stature in doing anything that undermines our academic integrity, because that's what our success rests on."
Another concern is corporate-endowed professorships, an honor that sometimes comes with strings attached. The Kmart chair at West Virginia University, for instance, is required to train assistant store managers thirty days out of the year. The University of Michigan also has its own share of corporate professorships: the Dow Professorship in Public Health and the Toyota Professorship of Japanese Studies are just two examples. To be fair, most corporate professorships are awarded in the Business School, where the line between the academic and the corporate world is so unclear that it becomes meaningless.
At least in the field of public relations, it seems the University has managed to keep up an appearance of propriety in corporate-sponsored research. The Office of the Vice President for Research is hosting its sixth annual Research Responsibility Program this fall, a series of discussions that deal with ethical conduct and responsibility in the field. In addition, the Division of Research Development and Administration (DRDA) maintains a website containing many of their policies and detailed disclosures on the amount of corporate sponsorships. Of course, it might be that we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg. There is, for instance, the idea of proprietary information-if a corporation provides an industry secret to use in research, the researcher may publish the results of the study, but not the secret upon which the research was based. Moreover, the Regent's Policy provides that the corporation has power of censorship over the publication of these results before they may be released. While technically no new information is suppressed in this process, we can only wonder as to how useful certain results might be if the methods behind their execution are not disclosed. Another clause in the Regent's Policy on "Non-Standard Restrictions" allows restrictions for any research that's not classified and does not fall into the category of "Standard Restriction", which means it can be just about anything. In another very vague statement, the Policy states that "such restrictions require explicit review and approval." The exact criteria for this approval are uncertain. Even more unnerving is a phrase that occurs a bit further down, stating "Sponsor restriction on openness may or may not be negotiable." Ambiguous statements such as these invite interpretation that is at best severely troubling.
This University frequently engages in multi-million dollar deals with corporations like Ford, Apple, and IBM. Earlier this summer, the Dow Chemical Company donated $2.5 million to appoint a professorship of Sustainable Science, Technology and Commerce. This Professorship will promote teaching and researching in fields like "life cycle analysis" and "renewable energy and material systems" at the school of Natural Resources and the Environment. One does not have to be a hardened cynic to wonder whether environmental studies by a giant polluter might be slanted toward a certain direction. Such criticism may not very fair, but it does carry some validity.
So far, even with such high-profile collaborations on file, the University of Michigan has managed to escape the sort of scandals that have erupted at other colleges. Hopefully this fact is due to the legal and ethical safeguards erected by the administration, and not through sheer luck. In any case, whatever their consequences, the collaborations do not show any signs of abatement, and are not likely to be limited by government legislation. When asked whether federal officials would consider additional legislation regarding these partnerships, Jefferson Porter says, "Politicians are loath to mess with the private and academic sectors in such a way. To do this would be invite a barrage of lobbyists. Plus, there is no real impetus for it, there is no crisis. I see the system as working fairly well."
The future will tell us whether this holds true. There is certainly no need for a university to isolate itself from all corporate connections. A great potential for mutually beneficial relationships does exist between these two very different institutions, the university and the corporation. The biggest challenge will be in straddling the fine line between commercial cooperation and commercial domination.