What you're saying is what I have suspected; university's take money from undergrads and their families and use it to subsidize research. I've never thought there was out-right theft of public money however...in that same 2002 interview with Mary Sue Coleman, she crowed about all the great research UofM does and pointed out some specific examples of research that was commercialized successfully. Instead of impressing me, the examples made me angry! Why? What I realized from the examples Coleman gave was that corporations can come in and skim the cream from the university's reasearch for a song; and leave the duds to the public to pay the tab for. Another example of the USA's socialism for the rich policies.
Chuck ----- Original Message ----- From: "Alan Rudy" <alan.rudy at gmail.com> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Wednesday, October 07, 2009 1:32 PM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] overconsuming health
> Chuck, they don't get more. I'd bet some of it is administration, some of
> it cuts from the legislature, some of it energy and building costs, some
> of
> it salaries (not hourly wages) and benefits, and some of it waste.
>
> At the same time, a good bit of it comes from the fact that the neoliberal
> idea that sucking off large portions of massive external grants - federal
> and corporate - will generate income that will more than pay for the
> indirect/overhead costs of the grants (and therefore allow some cash to
> return to the general fund) has turned out to be massively massively
> massively wrong... the costs of the layers of lab infrastructures,
> services,
> personnel, certifiers, regulators and bureaucrats necessary to administer
> grants just about always supercedes indirect cost recovery... but the more
> wrong their approach proves to be the more committed they become to
> pursuing
> ever-larger grants and ever-more extensive university-industry relations
> to
> make up the difference.
>
> Alan
>
> On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 12:59 PM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Oct 7, 2009, at 12:48 PM, Chuck Loucks wrote:
>>
>> Would you care to take a stab at the question I asked of Mary Sue
>> Coleman,
>>> that is, what do we get for all that extra money?
>>>
>>
>> Wish I knew, but I don't, sorry. They have added massive layers of
>> administration, no?
>>
>> I went to high school with Walter Benn Michaels' friend and former
>> co-author, Steve Knapp, who's now president of George Washington
>> University.
>> Wish I could ask him, but I haven't spoken to him in 35 years.
>>
>> Doug
>>
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