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Universities in the Marketplace: The Commercialization of Higher Education

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Anyone who has been associated with higher education in this country in the last fifty years is aware of the massive changes that have been sweeping over private colleges and state university systems in the last twenty to thirty years, changes ranging from the unfortunate consequences of political correctness to those associated with a relaxation of more rigorous academic standards to make such education "more accessible" to the population at large to other changes associated with the increasing concentration on more practical "vocational" educational skills to the proliferation of shop-as-you-go graduate educational programs, diploma mills designed to deliver to consumers a plethora of MBA and other business-oriented degrees in service to their career progression. Those of us professionally associated with higher education have often bemoaned the sad changes visiting themselves upon what was once a proud institution, the marvel of the western world in terms of its level of rigor, accessibility, and relative merit in terms of educational product.

In this recent tome by former Harvard University president Derek Bok, yet another form of change and devolution of all the academy once stood for is discussed with both intelligence and wit; the commercialization of institutions of higher education and the associated seduction and corruption of faculty, administrators and the university system itself. Bok takes a probing look at the many ways in which financial enticements have entered the ivory towers, and how such temptations are profoundly altering the business of the university system itself, often warping both the mission of the institution as well as the intellectual products flowing from the academic marketplace. Beginning with the advent of financial gain associated with college sport programs, the author wonders out loud at what point the transformation of what was once an ancillary concern for additional source of academic funding became a much more purposeful source of university profit, resulting in much more deliberate efforts on the university's part to use sport for financial gain.

He similarly muses over the fashion in which independent medical research efforts within university setting have become captive to the driving force of pharmaceutical and other medical enterprises, such that the focus and progress of medical research becomes much more focused on particular kinds of patent-driven and/or profit-oriented enterprises, efforts that if successful can turn humble medical researchers into instant millionaire tycoons. Similarly, universities now find themselves competing over intellectual hot properties like cybernetic wiz-kids, with places like Harvard offering fringe benefits like free homes in Concord or Lexington MA in order to lure promising young computer superstars capable of drawing a lot of grant money and/or corporate sponsorship to the institution. Finally, he debates as to what the practice of beginning such internet-based distance learning programs will have on both the quality and nature of higher education in the future, since it could well have significant consequences for those wishing to actually do their study on-campus.

Of course, commercialization has some positive aspects to it, as with the excellent (and quietly profit-oriented) extension university system associated with Harvard. One can gain access to the same faculty and coursework as is available in the full-time day programs at Harvard in part-time evening programs (both undergraduate as well as graduate) that are relatively inexpensive, have few entrance requirements and all of the advantages of a more rigorous Harvard liberal arts education. While it is likely true that the program exists as a way of Harvard itself cashing in on the cache of its name, it offers a quality educational program and provides a potential excellent product for a discerning consumer. At base, this is an absorbing book, one well worth the time and effort to thread through its 200 some pages in search of some provocative and thoughtful observations of the drawbacks associated with the increasing commercialization of the university marketplace. It is a book I can highly recommend. Enjoy!

Derek Bok, a professor and formerly president of Harvard, writes about the pressures for commercialization that institutions of higher education face and are likely to face in the future. (Commercialization is defined as "efforts within the university to make profit from teaching, research and other campus activities.") In particular, Professor Bok has taken on three major themes: commercialization of athletics, research and education (online teaching, extension programs, etc.)

For one, this book is a useful reality check. Through scores of studies, Professor Bok dispels the myth that these three activities are profitable. Save few exceptions, these endeavors prove financially disastrous. More than that, there are the hidden dangers of compromising a university's academic standards and standing in the community. The call for a candid evaluation of the costs of commercialization is half of the book's theme.

The other half outlines prescriptions and guidelines for university presidents about how to handle these increased pressures. Professor Bok suggests revision to NCAA rules, and university oversight and care to limit the influence of corporate sponsors over research or the curriculum taught in schools.

In the end, "Universities in the Marketplace" is a reminder that universities are built around values: "the larger message of a liberal arts education [is] that there is more to life than making money." These values and the collaborative spirit, on which universities thrive, are threatened by the mistaken perception that there is money to be made by exploiting a school's name. The adherence to high standards is an old prescription for new pressures, and the one that Professor Bok suggests as the ultimate guideline for dealing with the threats of the future.

Former Harvard University President Derek Bok warns that making commercial ventures part of the fabric of U.S. higher education endangers universities' basic values and goals. However, he also gives compelling descriptions of why trustees and administrators are tempted to sign deals with corporations. He is realistic about the slim prospects for keeping such ventures away, especially since some - like sports teams - are already entrenched. Because Bok's analysis is so deeply rooted in his years of experience leading Harvard, his proposed guidelines for how and when to allow big business on campus are particularly helpful. His views are occasionally unwarrantedly sunny, such as when he avers that faculty members rarely guide students into work that promotes the teacher's financial gain. He also asserts that faculty must be wary of collaborating with pharmaceutical companies to get access to facilities and materials, even though funding unfettered research has become increasingly difficult. Furthermore, after asserting that doctors are alert to drug companies' promotions in sponsored continuing education courses, he acknowledges research showing that doctors who attend such courses are more likely to prescribe the companies' drugs. Despite such detours, we find this book extremely valuable for anyone who believes that academic freedom and integrity truly matter. Academic leaders should read Bok's important, thoughtful and useful ideas on ways that colleges can minimize the risks of commercialization.

Derek Bok does a respectful job in describing the issues. The book provides an excellent foundation for the general public to understand the influence of commercialization on higher education. Higher education is big business in the United States. The book's relevance to issues related to intercollegiate athletics, higher education research, online delivery of education and other influences on academics is necessary to understanding the impact of commercialization, both positive and adverse, on higher education today.

I found the book to be interesting, yet somewhat limited in that often the book was repetitive and the ideas shared were fairly obvious examples and too narrow in scope. When the book was published in 2003, online education far surpassed some of the descriptions provided by the author. To suggest that one online class could cost one million dollars to develop is overstated and many of the examples of the type of pedagogy in online education were naïve and not current. Also, all Division I college athletic programs are not administered as Bok describes. He over generalizes when suggesting that admission standards at universities are lowered to accommodate student athletes. This is not always the case.

Certainly Derek Bok's credentials speak for themselves, but it appears that in writing this book, additional research and new ideas could have been presented.

This work addresses the conflicts between outside financial interests and a university's commitment to providing its students with an education of the highest quality. Examples: Institutions with Division 1A football and basketball teams all too often permit their coaches to recruit players who normally would not be admitted as entering students, and to arrange for courses of substandard quality to be offered to such athletes for credit toward graduation, and this practice is supported enthusiastically and with unassailble force by alumni, legislators, and other backers. Professors subordinate teaching to research sponsored by well-paying commercial enterprises that sometimes skew the results and even the written reports in their favor. Drug companies pay professors to conduct trials of their products that are biased to emphasize positive results and even to suppress harmful side effects. Students of science are assigned such mundane tasks as proving that a given brand of spaghetti sauce is thicker than competing varieties, or proving that the number of, say, pretzel sticks in one brand exceeds those of others. Even not-for-profit schools increasingly offer for-profit correspondence or executive training courses and sessions that are not at all challenging to the professors who are cajoled into teaching them. Online enterprises such as the University of Phoenix threaten to make residential college campuses obsolete.

In this account of the corruption in academia caused by proffers of the almighty dollar, we are afforded a detailed sketch of a university or college president's many responsibilities, e.g., attracting and retaining highly qualified, respected professors, balancing intellectual interests against financial health. And, surprisingly for a former president of Harvard University, there is a wistful nod to small colleges of liberal arts that cannot afford to field Division 1A teams, with the accompanying financial pressures and temptations to corruption.

For readers interested in pursuing study of the advantages of small liberal arts institutions, I recommend Bruce Haywood's The Essential College, published by XOXOX Press and listed on this website.

Nonacademic observers frequently express the wish that universities `be run like businesses'. The (often sad) fact is that they already are so run, to the detriment of academic principle and academic quality. Derek Bok is all too aware of these realities and explores them in this relatively brief book.

He is aware of the temptations, of course: big-time college athletics, licensing agreements with sportswear companies, the siren song of institution-saving patent income, the faculty/institutional participation in tech transfer businesses, medical school participation in clinical trials with self-interested pharmaceutical companies, the lure of the internet and mass, for-profit coursework, the exploitation of university extension, the erosion of admission standards in the face of significant development opportunities . . . the list goes on and on.

Bok provides a nice enumeration of the temptations, expresses sympathy for universities with regard to conditions that are already too far gone (athletics, the relationships between medical schools and the medical industry, e.g.) acknowledges that survival will generally trump values and principles, shows the pros and cons of commercial activities, relates some horror stories and offers counsel which, if implemented, would help to ameliorate our condition before it is too late.

Unfortunately, the advice takes a predictable form. For example, some university research has resulted in triumphs that have changed the institutions which developed the process or made the discovery. One thinks, for example (and Bok notes), Harry Steenbock's process for treating milk so that its constituent vitamin D would eliminate rickets. The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (which manages the Steenbock (and other) patent income is one of Wisconsin's major comparative advantages. On the other hand, chasing patent income can often fail; it can divert universities from their fundamental purposes and it can distort their values. Bok then offers a host of examples of things that one might do (increased trustee regulatory oversight, etc.) to ameliorate this situation. However, he also acknowledges the fact that his proposals are unlikely to be a be-all and end-all solution, that there are two sides to this issue, etc. etc.

Thus, we get a good elucidation of the potential problems, some examples of how succumbing to the temptations can be deleterious (but with an awareness that the payoffs, if handled wisely, can be very advantageous), some suggestions for muting the problems (with an awareness that they are likely to be insufficient in and of themselves) and a final hope that we will all do good and avoid evil, to the extent possible.

The book benefits from Bok's extensive experience and usually clear-headed judgment; it is limited, of course, by the fact that Harvard's `problems' are markedly different from nearly everyone else's. It may have greater temptations but it also has the armor of a multibillion dollar endowment. At one point, for example, he argues that we should be wary of using extension as a cost center (i.e. a cost-generating center) because the college and graduate school (to which extension's `positive variances' would likely be reallocated) already have enough money. Ah, would that that were always so. He also talks about the generosity of the country in funding public education. Not to bite any of the hands which feed us . . . but that allocation now represents a smaller and smaller portion of public universities' total budgets and entrepreneurship (though hopefully not of the whorish variety) is now a university necessity.

As state legislatures squeeze funding for higher education and private university endowments shrink, entrepreneurial leaders in higher education have found creative ways to fill budget gaps by attracting more students and partnering with private corporations. Bok has given us a series of cases in which these budget enhancement measures violate core values of higher education and harm universities. Central to his argument is that the entrepreneurial university ultimately cannot serve two masters; revenue enhancement strategies often compromise the central mission of the academy. Football programs that require players to spend excessive hours training and traveling make it very difficult for team members to obtain an education. Partnerships with corporations that require secrecy clauses in contracts interfere with academic norms of peer review and wide sharing of new findings. These norms support the progression of scientific knowledge and without them, the rate of discovery will inevitably slow.

One of the more sobering sections of the book looks at the sad state of distance education, the fastest growing sector of higher education today. The lure of low-cost high-profit online courses has proved so irrestistible that many institutions are willing to forego quality to partake in the revenue bonanza that distance education has become. When students become customers whom teaching faculty must serve, what happens to academic values? If the customer is always right and students all want A's, untenured professors and adjuncts are in a difficult bind.

This book has made me think more critically about my own university's foray into Divison I athletics and distance education. There is nothing inherently wrong with either but it is critical to retain the core values of the institution, even at the expense of winning games, contracts and tuition dollars.

Great book with real life examples about higer education, capitalism, and marketplace. Quick and easy read.

Derek Bok, former President of Harvard University, presents a clear and thoughtful examination of the risks of commercializing higher education, while recognizing that there are times when the benefits of such activities will outweigh the costs. The greatest risk that commercialization poses is the gradual erosion of the values that have served the university in its American form so well for nearly four hundred years. His book stands as a warning, albeit a balanced one, of what can be lost by excessive focus of creating university products for the market.

As one might expect, Bok's discussion focuses on the research university, but at a time when so many universities and colleges are in financial distress, it is of relevance for all of higher education. There is a useful set of notes that indicate contemporary sources that relate to his theme, showing familiarity with a variety of interesting materials. Without a doubt a valuable work that makes the reader eager for more.

Derek Bok, former President of Harvard University and author of two useful books on "the state of the nation", has done a very fine job of examining the commercialization of the university, with separate chapters on athletics (the golden goose tends to cost more to maintain than most realize, both in financial terms and in terms of negative impacts on scholarship); scientific research; and customized executive education offered on a for-profit basis.

While the author concludes with some recommendations, the book is best for its reasoned discussion of the problems. The prostitution of the universities, and the blandness of undergraduate education, are issued that will not be solved by any one community, any one state, or even by Congress. This is going to require a President committed to national education and public health as the "first plank" of any national strategy to united and nurture what I think of as the "seven intelligence tribes": national (spies and counterspies), military, law enforcement, business, academic, non-profit and media, and religions-clans-citizens.

As we have seen in time since 9-11, all of these tribes appear to be failing--national on 9-11, military in Afghanistan and Iraq, law enforcement on Hamas and Pakistani terrorists still active within the US, business in general (Boeing being had by Airbus, for example), now in this book, the universities, the failure of the media to support the debate on going to war with Iraq, and of the New York Times in ethics specifically, the self-indulgent failure of the Catholic Church to police its own priests--this is not a pretty picture. In all of this, the university is central to the creation of a public that should be fully versed in "civitas" and electing public officials who are liberally educated as well as scientifically trained. That does not appear to be happening. This book helps explain why.