Defining Values for Research and Technology: The University's Changing Role

Since the end of the Cold War, federal funding for research at American universities has sharply decreased, leaving administrators searching for a new benefactor. At the same time, changes in federal policy permitting universities to patent, license, and profit from their discoveries combined with the emergence of new fields that thinned the lines between "basic" and "applied" research to make universities an attractive partner to private industry. This reorientation from public to private funding has created new challenges for the academy. In thirteen insightful and wide-ranging essays, Defining Values for Research and Technology examines the modern research university in the throes of transition. Contributors discuss the tensions of research versus education, public funding versus corporatization, and the academic freedom of open discussion versus the secrecy needed to ensure financial gain. Will universities and their professors pursue industrial imperatives at the expense of traditional academic values, or will they harness the energy of industry to advance a mission of research for the public good? Defining Values for Research and Technology, while acknowledging potential dangers, argues that university-industry partnerships have the potential to both benefit industrial expansion and enrich academic life. In doing so, it raises important points about the connections between "pure" science and industrialized technology more generally, and the role that policy plays in science. Both those interested in the evolution of the academy and scholars of the history and sociology of science will find something worthwhile within its pages.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1 Introduction Part 2 I. The Purpose of the Research University Chapter 3 1. Research Universities in the Third Millennium: Genius with Character Chapter 4 2. The University of the Twenty-First Century: Artifact, Sea Anchor, or Pathfinder Chapter 5 3. Can Universities Survive the Global Knowledge Revolution? Part 6 II. Forging Partnerships: Industry, Governments, and the Research University Chapter 7 4. The Changing Nature of Innovation in the U.S. Chapter 8 5. Back to the Future—The Increasing Importance of the States in Setting the Research Agenda Chapter 9 6. Global Public Goods for Poor Farmers—Myth or Reality Chapter 10 7. Science and Sustainable Food Security Part 11 III. Funding, Economic Incentives, and the Research Agenda Chapter 12 8. Federal Science Policy and University Research Agendas Chapter 13 9. The Ethical Challenges of the Academic Pork Barrel Chapter 14 10. The Public-Private Divide in Genomics Part 15 IV. The Dark Side of University-Corporate Partnerships Chapter 16 11. The Effects of University/Corporate Relations on Biotechnology Research Chapter 17 12. The Governmentalization and Corporatization of Research Chapter 18 13. Technology and the Humanities in the "Global" Economy