Who Loses when Big Oil Marries Higher Education

For the past few years I have begun to look at the role of the university in various capacities: mainly I have been curious about the onerous effects of the extreme and growing debt loads that colleges and universities increasing place on their graduates. With rising consumer debt, the costs associated with higher education are compounding the crippling issues of American debt. Also, after my trip to Cuba some years back, I began to look at the role that universities play, in collaboration with myriad Governmental agencies like USAID, where taxpayer dollars are used to lay subversive groundwork against governments our government would like to alter, especially in this hemisphere.

This article surrounds yet another developing niche for the university: aiding Big Oil to develop biofuels, and in the process privatize the academic process in certain arenas for the gain of a single corporation.

-Alok




http://www.commondr eams.org/ archive/2007/ 03/24/60/ print/

Published on Saturday, March 24, 2007 by The Los Angeles Times

Big Oil Buys Berkeley
The BP-UC Berkeley Research Deal Pushes Academic Integrity Aside For Profit.

by Jennifer Washburn

On Feb.1, the oil giant BP announced that it had chosen UC Berkeley,
in partnership with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, to lead the largest
academic-industrial research alliance in U.S. history. If the deal is
approved, BP will give $500 million over 10 years to fund a new
multidisciplinary Energy Biosciences Institute devoted principally to
biofuels research.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, UC administrators and BP executives
immediately proclaimed the alliance - which is not yet a done deal -
a victory for higher education and for the environment. But here's
another way to see it. For a mere $50 million a year, an oil company
worth $250 billion would buy a chunk of America's premier public
research institutions, all but turning them into its own
profit-making subsidiary.

This is shameful. The core mission of Berkeley is education, open
knowledge exchange and objective research, not making money or
furthering the interests of a private firm. In the last two decades,
however, Cal and other universities - increasingly desperate for
research dollars - have signed agreements that fail to protect their
essential independence, allowing corporations excessive control over
their research.

The BP deal magnifies this trend. Most corporations sponsor
university research one study and one lab at a time. With the Energy
Biosciences Institute, BP would exert influence over an entire
academic research center (spanning 25 labs at its three public
partners), bankrolling and setting the agenda for projects that cut
across many departments.

What's more, BP would set up shop on campus: 50 scientists employed
by the company would work on joint projects with academic scientists
at Berkeley and the University of Illinois. BP also would set up
private labs on these campuses, where all the research would be
proprietary and confidential.

Robert Reich, former secretary of labor and now a professor of public
policy at Berkeley, has warned that - because of its size and
commercial scope - the BP alliance could be either "a huge feather in
Berkeley's cap or a huge noose around Berkeley's neck." The question
is, do rules and practices set up to safeguard academic integrity and
independence stand up to a corporate deal of this magnitude?

The fine print of the plan, which UC made public only after it was
leaked, doesn't create much confidence. Californians need to know
that their public university is dedicated to pursuing the best
science, not just science that generates profits for BP.
Unfortunately, the plan indicates that narrow commercial criteria
could guide much of the Energy Biosciences Institute's research.

Normally, even when university research is corporate sponsored,
professors alone direct and shape it. Often, funds are assigned and
research proposals are accepted through an independent, peer-review
process. In the BP deal, however, the institute - with a director to
be "proposed" by BP and other high-level positions to be filled by BP
employees or appointees - would play a major role in setting research
agendas and controlling purse strings. The plan touts the company's
role: BP's "business industry leadership will strongly differentiate
the EBI from other primarily academic research enterprises. "

The plan also would hand unusual control to BP in other areas. A
bedrock principle of academia is that campus-based research should be
published. That's why Berkeley bans classified military research from
campus; the open exchange of information is fundamental to the
advancement of science and education. But those 50 BP scientists on
campus would, according to the plan, have "no obligation to publish."

Universities also, as a rule, hold the intellectual property rights
in their research, no matter how it's funded. In order to foster
competition and innovation, they generally allow more than one
company to use their discoveries for commercial purposes. This plan
allows BP to co-own intellectual property in some instances and to
receive exclusive (albeit time-limited) commercial licenses as well.
The plan itself notes that such terms "deviate from standard policy"
and "require exceptions to policy in order to be implemented. "

Ultimately, there is an even more basic question to consider. Would
the institutionalizatio n of BP at Berkeley call into question the
essential objectivity of the research generated by the collaboration?
BP is clearly investing its $500 million not just in public-good
research; it's hoping to advance an energy source it's already
committed to commercially. Given that there is nothing in the plan
that calls for truly independent selection of research proposals, can
the Energy Biosciences Institute be trusted to pursue research that
might prove that biofuels are the wrong alternative- energy choice?
Would its social sciences arm freely investigate potential ecological
and economic downsides?

UC President Robert Dynes has characterized the BP deal in telling
words. "It is my belief," he said, "that we are reinventing the
research university in this public-private partnership. "

Five hundred million dollars is a nice chunk of change, but does any
amount of money justify "reinventing" UC Berkeley's academic
integrity? That's what UC officials should ask themselves before they
sign this deal.

Jennifer Washburn is a fellow at the New America Foundation and the
author of "University Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher
Education."

Copyright 2007 Los Angeles Times

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