Ivy and Industry: Business and the Making of the American University, 1880-1980/Academic Capitalism and the New Economy: Markets, State, and Higher Education/Buying In or Selling Out? The Commercialization of the American Research University

Academe, May/Jun 2005 by Bowen, Roger W

With the gross commercialization of higher education, as Derek Bok points out, the public's trust in the academy declines, and with that sad development, a sadder development still-"the risk of government intervention"-rises. But government has intervened, repeatedly, not only in starving higher education of public funding, and with barely a whimper of protest from the voters, but also in Grafting policies, such as the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act, that guarantee commercialization of the academy while aiming to benefit private industry. Government also intervenes when it intentionally politicizes the academy by appointing ideologues or political cronies to governing boards, endorses Orwellian policies like the Academic Bill of Rights, and legislates to impose morality (for example, through the Solomon Amendment, which punishes institutions that bar from campus recruitment programs employers, including the U.S. military, who do not comply with policies against sexual-orientation discrimination). Regrettably, none of the books under review comment on the relationship between commercialization and politicization: that is, whoever controls the wealth perforce has the power.

Nor do they discuss the fact that government interventions frequently violate academic freedom because, simply, they place economic or political concerns above the marketplace of ideas. What the academy needs is government acceptance that the academy should be free to govern itself because the academy is the best and truest path toward building a stronger democracy and a more civil society. If that were to happen, the reach of commercialism into the academy would not end, but its members would at least be free to pursue truth for the common good and not have to worry about the price tag for their efforts or the size of the revenue stream from their discoveries.

Roger Bowen is AAUP general secretary.