MARKET MODEL UNIVERSITY
by Giulio Gabbiani
As undergraduate student
I was very impressed by the description of natural selection phenomena implying
the rapid substitution of a whole population of a given species, e.g. flies,
by another, due to the advantage or disadvantage conferred by a seemingly irrelevant
trait, such as wing color, that was attracting or repulsing a recently arrived
predator.
A comparable situation is likely to emerge at present in our Science and particularly
Medical Faculties due to a change in the rules of cooperation between University
and Industry (1). Since the Bayh-Dole
law allowing the Universities to patent inventions supported by the USA Government,
an evolution has taken place in most countries toward a "market-model University"
in which the Departments that "make money" or "attract money"
are highly rewarded compared to those which do not succeed in this respect (2).
This new attitude can go as far as to generate grottesque aspects such as the
labeling of small laboratory furniture with the name of a private donnor, but
most observers agree that it represents a very efficient and may be an essential
way of supporting the activity of many laboratories, particularly at a time
in which the governmental support for research tends to stagnate or even to
decrease. The laboratories that most benefit of this help are those oriented
towards biotechnological, analytical or practical applications, since their
results can be eventually exploited by the donnor. The donnor can ask and most
of the time asks to benefit of the public recognition expressed in different
occasions by the recipient. It is clear that this new situation tends to orient
reseach planification in a direction favorable to the views and the interests
of the donnor corporations. This attitude has already produced important and
sometime dramatic deviations and has stimulated a number of debates on ethical
problems as well as the suggestion of including the teaching of ethics in the
curriculum of scientific studies.
The favorable and unfavorable aspects of this evolution have been discussed
widely in scientific and more general publications. I would like to concentrate
on a point that has been in my opinion somehow neglected up to now. Since the
Renaissance and the flourishing of modern Univesities the paradigm of the primacy
of basic research, in which the main motivation is intellectual curiosity, has
remained the basis for the selection process regulating the appointment of university
professors. This attitude has allowed to select, in addition to other personality
profiles, a category of individuals characterized on the one hand by the capacity
of producing innovative concepts and on the other hand by the persistence in
pursuing their ideas passionately when they inevitably encounter skepticism
or even hostility. These imaginative researchers generally manifest a tendency
to go against accepted rules and a lack of interest for economical problems.
When their discoveries were recognized, these individuals became easily adopted
by the society; but usually this lucky event took place after many years of
struggle and bitter conflicts and not necessarily during their life time. As
prototypes of this personality profile I would indicate Galileo Galilei in the
17th century and Albert Einstein in the 20th century, but it appears more and
more evident that individuals exibiting this personality, who fight and eventually
succeed in introducing new concepts or techniques in the everyday practice of
science, belong to all levels of academic activity, from the most theoretical
to the most technical and practical. Again such individuals are characterized
by a predominant imaginative activity and by the desire to pursue their ideas
rather than to accumulate wealth (3).
My worry is that the paradigm of "market-model University" creates
an environment absolutely hostile to such category of scientists and/or technicians
and thus causes their disappearence from the academic life. This would deprive
our society of one, possibly the main, source of innovation that has contributed
during the last centuries to the progress of science and of the society in general.
REFERENCES
1.Warde I.Modele anglosaxon en question. Economica, Paris,1997
2.Engell J and Dangerfield A. Humanities in the age of money. Harward Review,
may-june 1998.
3.Alter N. L'innovation ordinaire. PUF, 2000.