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Science for Sale

The University of Chicago Press

Contents

A Background Note and Acknowledgments.....................................viiIntroduction..............................................................1Part One: The Setting and the System1 Money for Science: Never Enough.......................................112 Elusive Industrial Angels.............................................383 Commercialize! It's the Law...........................................514 Changing Attitudes....................................................825 The Price of Profits..................................................1016 Conflicts and Interests...............................................1277 A New Regime..........................................................147Part Two: As Seen from the Inside-Six Conversations8 Success and Remorse...................................................1819 A Congenial Partnership...............................................19510 When the Rules Change in Midstream....................................20511 Profits and Principles................................................22012 Generations Apart.....................................................23313 The Journals Revolt...................................................243Part Three: Fixing the System14 What's Right and Wrong, and How to Make It Better.....................257Epilogue: A Parable for Our Time..........................................286List of Abbreviations.....................................................295Notes.....................................................................297Index.....................................................................313

Chapter One

We run our research enterprise primarily in a self-funding way, but not in a profit mode. So we have to work very, very hard on a competitive basis to bring in the monies to pay the people, to fund the indirect costs, which includes replacing buildings. Actually, we end up subsidizing research through other revenue sources in the medical center to keep it going. Some faculty members will be recruited here to become wonderful, superb clinicians and, in doing so, clinician-teachers. Others will be more in what we call the physician-scientist track, have very modest clinical activities, teach graduate students and basic-science medical students. And, yes, we expect them to fund almost all of their laboratory activities through external funds. Almost all faculty are expected to bring in most of their own support. We try to be very, very supportive, because anyone can have a short downtime. So we provide good, reasonable inter-grant support, but not forever. Robert P. Kelch, executive vice president for medical affairs and CEO, University of Michigan Health Systems

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Most serious science in the United States is conducted in the big institutions known as research universities. The counts vary, but about fifty of them are in the scientific big leagues, conducting research and producing PhD's across at least several important disciplines; perhaps another fifty are striving to join them. On money matters, all these universities are puzzling and contradictory organizations. Virtually all describe themselves as hard-pressed financially, even as they ingest colossal sums from a variety of sources, accumulate huge endowments, and operate on enormous budgets. In 2006 Harvard's endowment reached $29.2 billion, a one-year increase of $3.3 billion, and its operating budget was nearly $3 billion. For the University of Michigan, the endowment in 2005 stood at $4.9 billion, and revenues for its three campuses-at Ann Arbor, Dearborn, and Flint-were $4.2 billion; for Stanford, $12.2 billion in endowment and a budget of $2.9 billion, plus a capital budget of $373 million; and for Johns Hopkins, $2.1 billion in endowment and a $2.4 billion budget. Their begging and searching for money never stops, while most practice miserliness in drawing upon their mounting endowments. Exempted from federal regulations that require tax-exempt foundations to spend at least 5 percent of their endowments annually, most universities spend less-in 2004, 4.5 percent each for Harvard and Yale, 4.1 percent each for Princeton and the University of California. A few spend more, but very little more. Despite the appearance of wealth, annual increases in tuition above the rate of inflation are a common feature of academic finance, though price-cutting deals are routinely made to bring in academically high-ranking students and other desirables, particularly star athletes and, lately, impoverished minority members who show academic promise.

With populations of students, faculty, and staff running into the scores of thousands, big universities are modern versions of the city-state. The University of Wisconsin-Madison, for example, lists 41,000 students, 2,250 faculty members, and 7,000 professional and administrative employees. Arizona State University, with 61,000 students in 2005, aims to enroll 95,000 by 2020 and double its research budget-which stood at $183 million in 2005-within three or four years. Employing persistent and sophisticated dunning methods, fund-raising campaigns run continuously in academe, with the billion-dollar mark, or more, often set as an inspirational goal at the mega-institutions. In 2003-4, gift collections totaled $540 million at Harvard, $524 million at Stanford, and $385 million at Cornell. The Chronicle of Higher Education periodically reports the progress of the twenty to twenty-five universities running billion-dollar, or more, fund-raising drives.

Universities possess their own security staffs, residential housing, schools for children, health facilities, newspapers and TV stations, theaters, places of worship, recreation facilities, and even courtlike bodies for judging infractions by both students and faculty. Like sovereign governments, they hold elections and they levy taxes, known in their context as tuition. Universities are increasingly innovative in developing relationships outside their boundaries, with local and national business firms, surrounding communities, and the federal and state governments. And they're constantly tinkering with their programs, with student internships, study abroad, combined undergraduate and graduate studies, and course offerings without bounds. A hoary legend of academe has it that Woodrow Wilson, in his frustrating pre-White House years as president of stodgy Princeton University, complained: "It's easier to move a cemetery than it is to change the curriculum." True at a few schools today, but not many.

In many settings, such as Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, the vast Boston-Cambridge higher-education concentration, the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, and several University of California campuses, universities are the biggest or among the biggest employers and spenders in the region. They look rich, even while maneuvering around the operating deficits that chronically plague many of them. Small colleges occasionally collapse and disappear for lack of money and students. Following publication in 1910 of the Flexner Report on medical education, scores of substandard, for-profit doctor-training mills went out of business. In a rare modern occurrence,...