The authors question the conventional wisdom that the Bayh-Dole Act contributed to the discernible increase in university patenting and licensing in the 1990s. The authors examine the diverse channels within which university-industry relations have occurred in the twentieth-century, paying particular attention to the recent past. The authors conclude that universities must maintain their historic commitment to the free flow of knowledge to serve the global public interest and sustain scientific and technological achievements of the past century.

Enders discusses 1) the German pattern of a strong link of the PhD to the labor market outside academe that is based on a traditional academic-disciplinary mode of apprenticeship training, and 2) approaches that argue for a new mode of knowledge production replacing an academic-disciplinary model of research training by a hybrid model that crosses disciplinary and organizational borders. Enders argues that a diversity of organizational and structural forms as well as different validation criteria and procedures will probably determine the future face of research training.

 

 

Newby focuses on the Enlightenment Principle relating to the unity of knowledge. He argues that the increasing fragmentation of knowledge is acting as a hindrance not only to the public understanding of science, but also the scientists’ understanding of the public. This is accompanied by the decline in public trust of all kinds of expert knowledge.

Based on data from a questionnaire study among all tenured professors in Norway, the authors find a significant relationship between industry funding and research performance. Professors with industrial funding describe their research as applied to a greater extent, they collaborate more with other researchers both in academia and in industry, and they report more scientific publications and more frequent entrepreneurial results. There is neither a positive nor negative relationship between academic publishing and entrepreneurial outputs.

The expanding university role beyond basic research complicates the structure and functioning of the national R&D establishment and increases the need for a more accurate model of technological change to better inform R&D policy. Moreover, in assessing the resulting applied technology’s impact on economic growth, both the general and partial equilibrium literatures enter the technology variable into a production function with the common ‘production’ assets (physical capital and labor). Such models obscure an important distinction between technology and these production assets. As such, its role is correctly specified only when combined with the other major demand-shifting asset, marketing. Allocations to these two assets vary across competing firms implying a spatial model of competition, while still providing traceability to the exogenous sources of public good technology elements, such as universities.

Clotfelter presents case studies of the arts and sciences at four institutions (Duke University, Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and Carleton College). Clotfelter begins with a description of the organizational form of these institutions and then considers developments between the mid-1970s to the early 1990s that may have had an effect on colleges and universities. He examines the arts and sciences expenditures of the four institutions and the staffing patterns of several selected administrative and academic units. Clotfelter last considers the allocation of faculty time among various duties and the courses offered by academic departments from the student perspective. The most prominent of Clotfelter’s findings is the overall increase in tuition levels and expenditures at elite higher education institutions.

Pechter and Kakinuma analyze coauthorship between Japanese academia and industry. In contrast to widely held beliefs, they find that coauthorship between academia and industry is not only prevalent, but has risen over the 1981 to 1996 period. They also find that Japanese industry collaborates primarily with Japanese scholars. While the percentage of foreign coauthorship doubled in the fifteen year period of the study, American co-authorship has declined relative to the universities of non-G7 nations. Pechter and Kakinuma advocate for context specific measurements of university-industry linkages or general, more broadly applicable techniques.

Kneller begins with a discussion of how companies have traditionally obtained intellectual property rights to university discoveries in Japan. He considers early legal procedures and the incentives they create to transfer technology in ways that are not transparent or formal compared to Bayh-Dole procedures. Kneller then considers how the legislation will affect university-industry technology transfer and how technology transfer practices commingle with other factors and influence the overall nature of university-industry cooperation and the development of high-technology industries in Japan.

Yamamoto considers the gradual changes and reforms taking place in the Japanese system of higher education. The article presents some facts and data relating to these changes, emphasizing the conflict between research and teaching for the institutions and their faculties and suggests new directions for the relationship between the university and research. Yamamoto proposes increased allocations to a limited number of research-intensive universities in an effort to enable university faculty and researchers to move between this limited number of institutions.

Lyall and Sell assert that market forces are eroding the traditional partnership between states and public universities and explain how the search for new revenue sources is refocusing the basic goals of public universities. They begin with a discussion of recent trends in American public universities and conclude with recommendations on how to 'save' higher education.

Sperber provides a historical review of the commercialization of the academy, beginning with its impact on college sports at the beginning of the twentieth century. Sperber offers that the commercialization of college athletics sets the stage for commercialization of all other aspects of university life, including research and scholarship.

Rai reviews how the American legal system encourages academics working in biotechnology to attempt to patent their work. She also addresses the financial impact of product licensing on university activities and the role that such licensing plays in restricting the flow of communication essential to the conduct of good science. Rai considers whether or not exclusive patenting is financially beneficial or whether models other than exclusive patenting may be more effective in promoting product development.

Schneiderman discusses Monsanto Company ‘discovery research’ partnerships with universities (in contrast to drug development research). He believes that university-business partnerships are essential to retain U.S. economic competitiveness. Rather than limiting the access of foreign companies to American research universities, Schneiderman advocates for equal access of American scientists, engineers and companies to foreign research and engineering centers. 

Cox describes the ascent of the Apollo Group’s University of Phoenix, and then addresses the emergence of the for-profit ethos in traditional academic institutions. Cox believes that this profit-orientation will unwittingly fail students in both a moral and fiduciary sense. Cox foresees American higher education being split in two – with expensive, elite private schools (and a handful of ‘public ivies’) on one hand and resource-scarce public institutions on the other side. These resource-scarce schools will be forced to compete against the elite institutions and will either destroy themselves in the process or will adopt for-profit tactics. Cox advocates for changes to higher education policy prioritizing the cultivation of well-rounding, thoughtful citizens in universities rather than short-term financial gain.

Tanguay begins with a discussion of the rise of merit pay systems and continues on to describe how these systems often produce dissatisfaction, inequity, competition, decreased performance, and resistance. She describes the implementation of merit pay systems at California State University, Fairfield University, and Rutgers University. Tanguay concludes by describing the context in which a merit pay system might reasonably be expected to succeed (namely, that they be regarded as a fair way by which to settle pay grievances) and expresses doubt regarding the likelihood of such a context.

Brodkey takes aim at curricula disciplining all children, regardless of class, according to some widely-received middle-class definition of learning and teaching. Brodkey points out that such policies implicitly or explicitly justify punishing students, parents, teachers, and/or administrators who challenge its exclusive authority by threatening them and/or children with expulsion from the middle class.

Giroux considers how certain features of cultural studies over time have attempted to address some of the same issues that conservatives and liberals have taken up with respect to higher education. He argues that the absence of any serious discussion of pedagogy, both in cultural studies and in the debates about higher education, has significantly narrowed the possibilities for redefining the role of educators as critical cultural workers and public intellectuals. Giroux therefore focuses on the development of pedagogy in the development of cultural studies and in the broader attempt to reform higher education.

This book is a collection of writings produced while Brodhead was Dean of Yale College. The first section focuses how undergraduates can get the most from their undergraduate education. Later sections focus on familiar challenges of the modern university – ranging from free speech to diversity issues to questions of constructing a coherent curriculum.

Coronil questions the U.S. presumption he finds embedded in the position paper that preceded the seminar on the Responsibility in Crisis. First, rather than being apart from society, the university’s sacred in the context of the societal transformations in which it is located. To remain sacred, he argues, the university works to conceal those connections; to understand how this sacred works, we most look more closely at the ways in which the university is embedded in the mundane, and in history. The global ambition of the North American university is associated with the increasing concentration of knowledge production to its advantage; this inequality is magnified by the presumption in the position paper’s title. Invoking the paper’s invitation of heresy, Coronil asks whether the way in which the North American university might globalize could reflect a democratization of knowledge production itself, apparent by undermining its own worldly privilege.

Das emphasizes the provisional nature of the collective intervention put forward by the seminar on Responsibility in Crisis. While she agrees that the university’s location within the state and market needs constant address, she wonders whether the significance of 9/11 proposed in the introductory paper is overstated and whether “sacred space” is the right way to defend it. Das was surprised by the “sporadic dissent” of the major American research universities to the federal administrative directives affecting jurisdiction of students and believes that this dissent “perhaps represented that universities were so dependent on funding from federal grants and their prestige as research universities was so tied up with funding that opposition was not a simple matter of withdrawing consent”.

Kennedy suggests that the university’s sacred space is about cultivating competencies in cross-cultural and interdisciplinary engagements in addition to providing a place to identify injustice and mourn losses, and explore the unsettled nature of identity and challenge of recognition in the world. This conception of ‘sacred space’ depends on having an environment where heresies can be considered, transformative dialogues nurtured, and their implications considered and refined. How can the university develop its potential, he asks, to experiment with new modes of communication that reach across working divisions of culture, language, religion, and discipline?

Gebert focuses on the site of evil’s production, and asks readers to consider “radical evil” as something defined by “an intentional group attack on a collectivity of individuals, selected necessarily to be defenseless, but possibly also on the basis of other characteristics, with the aim of exterminating them.” Gebert raises the challenge to consider how the victim responds to evil. Gebert believes it is the mission of the U.S. university to identify the individuality of radical evil, by helping communities associated with that exercise to dissociate from its practice, and put responsibility on those individuals who commit it.

Cohen argues that no simple location or heritage explains the problem of Africa’s awkward location in the world. Cohen identifies problems not only with race, but also with other metanarratives used to construct useful knowledge about Africa. Through the telling of the story of the murder of Robert Ouko in Kenya, Cohen argues for an elevated status of uncertainty within the scientific protocol of the social sciences. Yet, as Cohen writes, “all narratives are ultimately contingent upon and conditioned by the workings of uncertainty as these narratives are constructed…in the same vein, justice is itself contingent on the recognition of the powers of uncertainty, or alternative possibilities, of the values of hesitancy in seeking closure”.

Lieberwitz addresses the impact of privatization on universities in the United States, focusing, in particular, on the effects on the university mission and academic research in the life sciences. The article begins with a discussion of the traditional definition of the university's public mission and faculty academic freedom and then moves to the legal developments promoting privatization that have had a major impact on the traditional definitions of university mission and faculty rights. Lieberwitz explores the impact of increased market activities at three levels: at the local level, on university culture and research; at the national level, on the university's public mission; and at the international level, on the social implications of the university's involvement with expanding intellectual property rights. Lieberwitz suggests forms of individual and collective action that faculty can take to reverse privatization practices in the university and to reassert the university's public mission.