Chronicle of Higher Education - November 12, 1999
By Paul Desruisseaux
Ottawa

Academics in Canada are growing increasingly concerned about what they see as the expanding influence of corporations over their campuses.

As government support for the universities has fallen -- from about 60 per cent of campus budgets in the 1980s to 40 per cent today -- the institutions have come to depend more and more on private funds for facilities, research, teaching, and other activities.

Some critics say businesses already play too big a role in shaping the research agenda of the universities, through their philanthropic support of laboratories and professorships along with the contract work they commission. Scholars say too much of the money comes with strings attached. They also decry the secrecy that they say often surrounds the agreements that their institutions reach with corporate partners and donors.

"Universities are a place of critical inquiry and must be able to survive independent of and outside of commercial interests," said Neil Tudiver, an associate professor of social work at the University of Manitoba and the author of a new book called Universities for Sale: Resisting Corporate Control over Canadian Higher Education.

Researchers say opportunities to win grant support from any source for basic research have narrowed in recent years. Even though the budgets of the national research councils have gone up, a growing proportion of the funds provided by the federal government for university-based research now comes with a requirement that projects have a corporate partner. Exactly how much government spending is tied to partnerships with industry is not known, although the Canadian Association of University Teachers is now compiling such information.

But anecdotal evidence abounds. For example, the Medical Research Council of Canada has a controversial research partnership with the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association of Canada. To obtain a grant under the program, to which the association has already contributed $200-million (Canadian), a researcher must work on a project in partnership with a corporate member of the association.

As a result of such trends, faculty leaders say, many scholars are being forced to forsake basic research for applied research, and to abandon scholarship in favor of entrepreneurship. Such developments, professors warn, threaten the academic freedom of scholars as well as the integrity of the universities.

Concern about such issues has been stirring on individual campuses for some time. But the faculty association, which has 30,000 members, is now trying to organize a national movement to counter what its leaders call the "corporatization" of higher education.

"The danger is that teaching and research are going to be steered by these infusions of money that our universities are only too eager to receive," said Bill Graham, president of the association and a philosophy professor at the University of Toronto. "And the idea that knowledge only has value if it has commercial applications must be challenged. This is potentially the most explosive issue in postsecondary education in decades."

As part of its drive to promote more awareness of the links between universities and business, the association plans to publish a directory of the corporate positions held by members of university governing boards.

"There's not been much attention focused on this in Canada, and we just had a sense that there should be more awareness of these linkages," said James Turk, the association's executive director.

A draft of the directory was distributed at a conference, sponsored by the association, on corporate influence on the universities, which was held here late last month.

The occasion provided a venue for academics to denounce various manifestations of corporate influence and commercialization on the campuses, from exclusive agreements with soft-drink bottlers and athletics-gear manufacturers to the "commodification" of teaching through distance-education programs. Even the adoption of less-democratic styles of university governance -- with fewer opportunities for faculty bodies to consult with university leaders -- was identified as an indication of corporate influence.

The main focus was how "out of balance" the research agenda had become. "Government and business want us all to be entrepreneurs," said Mr. Graham. "But the job of an entrepreneur is to develop and sell a product, not to pursue the truth. Turning scholars into entrepreneurs undercuts the very idea of postsecondary education."

The largest infusion of funds for research from the government in recent years came in 1997, when $800-million was set aside to establish the independent Canada Foundation for Innovation. Its goal is to strengthen the country's research capacity over a five-year span, mainly by developing research infrastructure at universities, hospitals, and other institutions. But the fund contributes only 40 per cent of the cost of projects it supports, with the balance coming from partner organizations, predominantly corporate ones.

Now the Cabinet of Prime Minister Jean Chretien is considering the recommendations of a government-appointed commission charged with finding ways for the country and its businesses to realize more direct benefits from university-based research. "Unfortunately, Canadian universities are not achieving their full potential in generating innovations from research results," said the report of the Expert Panel on the Commercialization of University Research. "Canadian taxpayers have a right to expect a greater return on their investment."

To the core university missions of teaching, research, and community service, the panel recommended the addition of a fourth: innovation, which it defined as "the process of bringing new goods and services to market." It also urged that faculty contributions to innovation be reflected in tenure and promotion policies.

The report, "Public Investments in University Research: Reaping the Benefits," states that the goal of its recommendations "is to increase wealth creation in Canada; it is not primarily to produce new revenue streams for universities."

Mr. Tudiver, in Universities for Sale, notes that one reason Ottawa encourages university-based industrial research "is that Canada has far less corporate-based research than the United States" and other industrialized countries. The book, published by the faculty association, was released at the meeting here.

Scholars don't argue about some things in the report, which recognizes that "a great deal of university research is basic research whose goals have nothing to do with the development of marketable products." It also calls for more funds for university research from the federal and provincial governments, as well as money to strengthen the "commercialization capacity" of the universities.

But the panel's work has been repudiated by many academics. The faculty association has urged the government to start over, with a commission whose members are "not biased toward industry." Six of the panel's nine members were drawn from Canadian business and industry; another was the head of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, a federal grant-making agency; and the other two were administrators of technology-transfer and research programs at the University of Alberta and the University of Washington.

"This is a very complex and important issue being handled by a very biased panel," said Mr. Turk. He said any such examination must include the participation of university researchers "from a diversity of disciplines and traditions."

Universities view the report in a different light. "What the commission is arguing for is more support for the universities as we try to commercialize research," said Ian D.C. Newbould, chairman of the Board of Directors of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, in an interview.

"If the recommendations were to be adopted -- and it's not a slam dunk that they will -- I don't think it would change the nature of the university," added Mr. Newbould, who is president of Mount Allison University, in New Brunswick. "Basic research is what universities do best; industry knows that."

He also said he did not see the threat that some academics perceive in the close relationships that institutions have developed with corporate partners. "Corporations support us, yes, but I'd be hard-pressed to see how a corporate agenda is affecting the universities.

"I think you'll find that to be the view of most presidents," he added. "I've talked to my colleagues, and they have not seen any egregious cases of corporations' getting involved in inappropriate ways. There can be exceptions, but, by and large, the universities are not dancing to a corporate tune."

To many academics at the meeting here, however, universities seem willing to go to great lengths to keep corporate patrons happy.

One widely publicized case they cited involved the president of the University of Toronto, J. Robert S. Prichard, who recently wrote a letter to the Prime Minister and several federal Cabinet members asking them to extend a review of drug-patent-protection regulations by 30 days to help out a large pharmaceutical company. That company, Apotex, is considering a donation reported to be upwards of $20-million (Canadian) for a center for cellular and biomolecular research at the university. After Mr. Prichard's letter became public, he apologized for his lobbying.

The Globe and Mail, a Toronto newspaper, published the minutes of a September meeting of the university's executive committee at which Mr. Prichard acknowledged writing the letter because the proposed rules might make it financially impossible for Apotex to make its donation to the university. In an earlier case involving Apotex, the drug maker tried to prevent Nancy Olivieri, a medical researcher at the Hospital for Sick Children, which is affiliated with the University of Toronto, from publishing findings that were critical of a drug it was developing (The Chronicle, April 9). Ms. Olivieri, in a speech at the meeting, criticized the university for taking the company's side and seeking to have her fired. She now heads a research program at the university.

Ursula Franklin, a physicist and professor emeritus at Toronto, told the academics here that, as a result of the proliferation of corporate-sponsored research, Canadian universities were in danger of becoming mere "production sites." She compared the mounting antipathy toward corporate-related research to the opposition to classified research in an earlier era. "Such opposition," she said, "was the product of a conviction that knowledge was a public good, not a private commodity."

Commercial interests now seek much more control and power than in the past, she argued, which is why many of the protocols that kept university research from being tainted by corporate influence seem to have been discarded.

Most of the 200 faculty leaders who attended the meeting had made up their minds about the issue. There was little debate, and few dissenting voices. To hear from another side in the debate, scholars were told they could attend a conference here at the end of the month called "Innovation Canada: Alliances for the New Millennium." It is sponsored by the three federally supported research councils along with the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, and several corporations.

Mr. Turk, of the faculty association, said that while his group's meeting might have seemed one-sided, "at least we had researchers and scholars talking to us. This innovation conference will be corporate folks having a pep rally."

Some scholars at last month's conference had heard enough talk and now wanted action. "We don't need to research this anymore -- we need to stop it," said Janice Newson, an associate professor of sociology at York University, in Toronto, and the co-author, with Howard Buchbinder, of The University Means Business: Universities, Corporations, and Academic Work.

"Corporatization has been diminishing the public-service university and replacing it with a university serving private interests," said Ms. Newson. "We've been told that this model of corporate partnering encourages innovation, but that's not so -- it stifles innovation."

Getting universities to disclose more about their corporate relationships and agreements should be a high priority, the scholars were told. "Many aspects of these agreements are secret, especially the intellectual-property clauses," said Mr. Graham, president of the faculty association. He acknowledged that, given the decreases in government financing for universities, the institutions need private support. But what is also needed, he said, is "openness, transparency, and accountability."

Faculty members at the University of Manitoba who were unsuccessful in obtaining more information about plans for a new center for research on genetically engineered food, which will bring the Monsanto Company to the campus, have planned a conference this March to discuss the issue. The meeting is being organized by the Manitoba Organization of Faculty Associations.

University of Manitoba officials have said that the Monsanto project, although located on the campus, is supported not by the institution but by the federal government. The vice-president for administration, Mike McAdam, said in a statement to the student newspaper that some faculty members wrongly believed that the university had entered into a binding partnership with Monsanto. While the institution did give final approval to locating the facility on the campus, he explained, the decision did not involve any commitment that could damage the university.

"We trust there will be some research interactions between our scientists and their scientists," he said. "That's the advantage of having them on campus."

An organizer of the planned meeting, Robert Chernomas, of the economics faculty at Manitoba, said the purpose of the conference will be to debate such questions as who controls research at a public university, and to what ends.

The Canadian Association of University Teachers hopes that scholars elsewhere in the country will organize similar events.

"We want to provoke more discussion of this issue," said Mr. Turk, the executive director. "Every way we come at it, this issue taps into a sense of unease that most academics feel, regardless of their discipline."
 
 

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