Universities in the Marketplace: The Commercialization of Higher Education

By D. Bok. 2003

756 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Is everything in a university for sale if the price is right? In this book, one of America's leading educators cautions that the answer is all too often "yes." Taking the first comprehensive look at the growing commercialization of our academic institutions, Derek Bok probes the efforts on campus to profit financially not only from athletics but increasingly, from education and research as well. He shows how such ventures are undermining core academic values and what universities can do to limit the damage. Commercialization has many causes, but it could never have grown to its present state had it not been for the recent, rapid growth of money-making opportunities in a more technologically complex, knowledge-based economy. A brave new world has now emerged in which university presidents, enterprising professors, and even administrative staff can all find seductive opportunities to turn specialized knowledge into profit. Bok argues that universities, faced with these temptations, are jeopardizing their fundamental mission in their eagerness to make money by agreeing to more and more compromises with basic academic values. He discusses the dangers posed by increased secrecy in corporate-funded research, for-profit Internet companies funded by venture capitalists, industry-subsidized educational programs for physicians, conflicts of interest in research on human subjects, and other questionable activities. While entrepreneurial universities may occasionally succeed in the short term, reasons Bok, only those institutions that vigorously uphold academic values, even at the cost of a few lucrative ventures, will win public trust and retain the respect of faculty and students. Candid, evenhanded, and eminently readable, Universities in the Marketplace will be widely debated by all those concerned with the future of higher education in America and beyond.

Subfields: Political Science and International Relations

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4c746e5ad99f0a841c03263d8059c22b168a8986

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In Political Science and International Relations

Citations in the corpus

The University and the Start-Up:Lessons from the Past Two Decades (2004, background): “Congressional and agency investigations of inappropriate behavior during the commercialization process—particularly violation of fairness-of-opportunity and conflict-of-interest regulations during the spin-out and licensing process—continued to be commonplace (Derek Bok, 2003).”
The ‘entrepreneurial turn’ and regional economic development mission of universities (2010, background): “The Humboldtian model of the university arising in early nineteenth century Germany in which the exclusive missions of the university were to provide instruction and to conduct research ( Altbach 1999 ).”
The Economic and Innovation Contribution of Universities: A Regional Perspective (2009, background): “This is surprising given the increased focus on HEI generated knowledge and research as an important stimulant of economic growth (Etzkowitz, 1998; Bok, 2003), especially for improving the development capabilities and economic performance of regions (Kukliński, 2001; Lawton Smith, 2003; Feldman and…”
Intensification of university–industry relationships and its impact on academic research (2007, background): “(Slaughter & Leslie, 1997). Bok (2003) adopts a balanced view.”
Explaining change in EU education policy (2008, background): “Functionalization for my analysis embraces the indicators for economies-of-scale and linkage to economic policies (see Marginson 1999); controlling mechanisms and competition-orientation signify marketization (see Bok 2003; Steier 2003; Martens et al. 2007).”
The Research University in Transition: The Emerging Global Model (2008, background): “Especially in the United States, corporate support for applied research is often accompanied by restrictions on public disclosure of findings and contracts regarding proprietary results (Bok, 2003; Kirp, 2003; Geiger, 2004).”
Contradiction, convergence and the knowledge economy: the confluence of academic and commercial biotechnology (2007, background): “... is that the profit imperative threatens to erode the freedom and autonomy of scientific inquiry, erect institutional constraints (through patenting and licensing conventions) to the flow of knowledge and information and allow pressures to engage in revenue generation to shape the questions that ”
The logic of economic development: a definition and model for investment (2016, background): “For example, support for public funding for higher education has eroded (Bok, 2009).”