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 In the year 2001,
Nature (Volume 409) featured an article that might have appeared
almost alarmist: "Is the university-industrial complex out of
control?" But the article had only voiced what had been troubling
many academics, especially in the western world, for several
years: that the academia was starting to look more and more like
business, and was in danger of losing what was its hallmark, its
openness and freedom. If anything, the reality which lay behind
such concerns has only become more pervasive across the world
today. The academia is increasingly embroiled within the forces
that are shaping today's so-called global economy: declining
government role and funding, and the dominance of the market
forces. These issues are likely to haunt the academia for sometime
and shape its future.
From even before the
onset of economic liberalization, the Indian academia has had to
contend with declining (per capita) public expenditure for higher
education; this in the face of increased demand for, and cost of
such education. Added to this is the ongoing WTO-mediated talks on
General Agreement on Trade of Services, which, inter alia, aims to
liberalize market access to the education sector of all
participating nations. Any such deregulation may entail increased
competition from foreign academic providers. These new
circumstances may compel the nation's educational institutions to
increasingly raise more of its resources from private sources,
both for sustenance and better performance.
The Academia's IPR Drive
In 1980 the US Bayh-Dole
Patent and Trademark Law Amendments Act empowered US university
researchers to share the proceeds of their patents with their
schools. The premise was that more work would migrate from the
universities to the marketplace if the schools and researchers had
an economic stake. Although slow to respond initially, today a
large number of US universities have opened
"technology-management" offices which deal with the intellectual
property arising out of academic research and enable their
transfer to private corporations. In the process, the academia is
able to partially compensate for reduced public funding. The
website of the Association of University Technology Managers (www.autm.net)
is replete with impressive facts and figures on licensing activity
nationwide.
Nevertheless, such
successes have not been embraced wholeheartedly by the entire
academia, which now is caught in a fractious debate. Supporters
claim that in linking more strongly with markets, the academia
will become more relevant in strengthening a country's competitive
position in a global innovation economy and more efficient or
accountable in the process. Opponents, on the other hand, point to
increasing conflicts of interest, profit-driven decision-making
(including those relating to for-profit ventures growing out from
academic institutions), and corporate influence in curricula
content and design. These presumably will weaken academia's
ability to encourage critical thinking, new ideas, spontaneous
innovation and free scientific discovery. A section of students
and faculty-both in the US and Europe-has dissented against the
"new academic style." In a wider sense, such protests are part of
a larger phenomenon that has divided the proponents and critics of
globalization: that global corporations now exert an inordinate
influence on public institutions, including universities.....more
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