Ah, this is a highly relevant article.
I know basically nothing about the 28-year-old act itself, but I can see how universities, strapped for cash, would jump at opportunities to bring in extra money by patenting their research. Unfortunately this is how the business of academia works. They need money somehow if they are to keep operating, and for small schools with relatively low endowments, a windfall from a particularly lucky discovery would certainly help to pay the bills.
But I agree with the author of the article that this undermines the goal of scholarship. Are we in this for the money? A professor I had as an undergraduate told me, when I said that I hoped to do what he does one day, "You won't get rich, but you'll be comfortable." The more competetive universities have to be, however, the less effective "comfort" can be. Universities start to find ways to pad that pillow a bit more so their presidents can sleep well, knowing that their institutions are fiscally secure. But does this foster that great pillar of the academy, that joy of the tenured senior faculty, "intellectual freedom"?
The more that universities have to push what is profitable, the less genuine freedom there is to pursue various intellectual fields. The humanities, for example, inevitably suffer because there is generally not a great deal of money to be made in, say, the publication of a scholarly book on ancient Rome. The discovery of a new medication would have more opportunities for extra income. And within the humanities, popular fields like Women's Studies garner extra attention from university administration because they attract the most excitement from the community. Money will be shifted to fields that are popular, cutting-edge, hip.
This does not mean that the popularity of a field is inherently detrimental--but to do what is popular because it pays the bills ends up giving short shrift to intellectually crucial subjects that happen not to be flashy. The Academy has then become slave to the Dollar, slave to the whims of fashion. Knowledge for its own sake dies; it becomes a means to a tangible end.
It is time to cut the chains.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I can understand obtaining a patent for something if it means that the discovery will not be exploited, so that the discoverer can oversee its use, but to hold on to something and not share purely to see if it will make any money? In science especially, this seems selfish and stingy. When the article mentions that because of patents grad students miss out on the innovations, well, doesn't that just contradict what graduate study is all about? The search for a grad school is about who you can study under (in most cases, anyway), what kind of research you can participate in. What good is a school's scientific reputation if it's locked up in a safe and you can't participate in it? I've always thought that science, maybe working in academia in general, was about not only finding out how the world works, but also sharing that knowledge with others. This is why students go to school, and this is why teachers teach. And this is the primary function of a university, a place of learning, the realm of higher education, etc etc. I'm curious now about the science practices at my undergrad, where the athletic department earned so much revenue that it helped fund the academics. Did that leave us free to learn for learning's sake?
ReplyDelete