university INC.

ASEE Prism, Mar 2004 by Daniel, Alice

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A LIFE OF THE MIND MEETS THE BOTTOM LINE, DAVID KIRP ASKS IN A THOUGHTFUL NEW BOOK ON THE EFFECTS OF MARKETING ON HIGHER EDUCATION.

Before David Kirp became an acting dean in the public policy school at Berkeley, he knew relatively little about the financial operations of the university. When the provost spent half an hour talking about the university seal at a council of deans meeting, Kirp was initially confused because he knew the university's mascot was a bear. Then he realized the discussion had to do with copyright and how to make money from Berkeley's brand.

My puzzlement "sounds unbelievable but it's true," says Kirp, a professor of public policy at Berkeley and an author of 14 books on topics ranging from AIDS to housing issues. "I spent lots of years writing, pursuing my bliss, picking topics and stories that really intrigued me and I knew amazingly little about how universities were run. There's a tacit deal [among professors and administrators] in which you leave us alone and we'll leave you alone." His curiosity piqued, Kirp decided the only way to satisfy it was to venture out and learn. The result, Shakespeare, Einstein and the Bottom Line: The Marketing of Higher Education, is an exploration of how the values of the academy are affected by the rising dominance of the marketplace, a subject of vital interest to anyone in acaclemia. In his latest book, Kirp takes readers from the complex world of Ivy League admissions to for-profit universities that could actually teach the Ivy League a thing or two, from business schools that have sold their soul in the midst of privatizing to high-tech companies that both help and hinder the intellectual strides of the academy. As the book notes, tension has historically existed between the university and its sources of funding, including the church and the crown; however, the controlling factor these days is the corporation.

Kirp doesn't deny that schools have to sell themselves, but he believes the demand should be based on something substantive. "Do you know what you're selling and why you're selling? Is there a value to this that makes you proud? That's something that colleges will often forget as they focus on the bottom line. I don't think survival is worth it at any cost," he says.

The bottom line has prompted universities to sell courses on the Internet; privatize schools; shrink the liberal arts; hire marketing consultants to provide identity makeovers; and collaborate with industry, which Kirp warns, can restrict freedom of inquiry. Kirp focuses on two of his own university's enterprises to showcase the best and worst of industry alliances. The Gigascale Silicon Research Center - part of a partnership among the federal government, higher education, and a Silicon Valley company known as MARCO, the Microelectronics Advanced Research Corp. - has benefited the university greatly, especially its graduate programs in engineering and computer science. The collaboration is considered a success because it allows world-class researchers from many universities to work together on solutions to high-tech problems while encouraging openness toward knowledge. It is that openness that can be lost, Kirp says, if a university "sells the store," an accusation directed at Berkeley's College of Natural Resources, which signed a five-year contract with the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis in 1998. Because the company owns a huge database of plant genome material, it required confidentiality agreements from faculty working with the database, a smart move for a corporation, but a controversial one for acaclemia, where openness in the public interest is a bedrock principle.

Hiring academic superstars at oversized salaries is another risk some universities take in the name of increasing enrollment and, ideally, private funding. Kirp puts the magnifying glass on New York University (NYU), which dramatically reversed its "record of mediocrity" in the 1980s by raising money to bring in star professors. Still, Kirp notes, there is a price to be paid. Faculty stars can create a narrow intellectual agenda for a department, especially if they bring in like-minded colleagues. But more importantly, senior professors often demand modest teaching loads, leaving poorly paid adjuncts and graduate assistants to make up for the shortfall in instruction. At NYU, 2,700 adjuncts teach 70 percent of the undergraduate classes. This is higher than at most universities. Still, teaching has become the responsibility of adjuncts nationwide who, by 2002, accounted for 43 percent of all university faculty.

THE TOP 25

School rankings can also drive the marketing efforts of a college. U.S. News World Report's annual survey of "America's Best Colleges" has huge influence in how some colleges make decisions. The guide places great importance on a college's selectivity-the percentage of applicants it admits as well as the percentage of those admitted that enroll-leaving colleges to play the numbers game. Kirp writes: "Admissions officers encourage as many students as possible to apply, knowing that the more applicants the college rejects, the more selective it appears to be. For the same reason-looking good to U.S. News-schools like Emory University and Franklin and Marshall do not accept their very best applicants, because the admissions office believes they won't actually come. By rejecting or wait-listing them, the school makes itself look harder to get into." Meanwhile, students whose families are well-off can afford to play their own admissions game. One company, Ivywise, charges $29,000 to help students get into the college of their dreams. There is even an Ivywise Kids, "geared to the highly competitive process of admission to selective kindergartens and elementary schools. For ambitious parents, it is never too soon to start marketing one's offspring."