Country of Exiles (33 page)

22.
Michael I. Luger and Harvey A. Goldstein,
Technology in the Garden: Research Parks and Regional Economic Development
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1991), pp. xv–xvii; Roger Geiger,
Research and Relevant Knowledge, American Research Universities Since World War II
(New York: Oxford, 1993), pp. 316–17; and, for 1997 numbers, see Peter Schmidt, “Engineering Complex at Virginia Commonwealth University Helps Lure Motorola,”
Chronicle of Higher Education
, June 6, 1997, p. A30.

23.
On the character of this park, see Luger and Goldstein,
Technology in the Garden
, pp 76–99; “A Staid Research Park Finds New Life
as a Cultivator of High-Tech Start-Ups,”
WSJ
, August 16, 1996, B1; Therese R. Welter, “Pooling in the Park,”
Industry Week
, April 4, 1988, 26, 28.

24.
Chronicle of Higher Education
, October 3, 1998, A41; “Engineering Complex at Virginia Commonwealth University Helps Lure Motorola,”
Chronicle of Higher Education;
on the University of Connecticut, see
Hartford Courant
, March 6, 1998 (courtesy of Mark Prisloe, economist, Department of Economic and Community Development State of Connecticut); and on the University of Massachusetts, see
NYT
, January 21, 1998, A14.

25.
Paul Selvin, “The Future University: Leaner and Meaner?”
Science
, October 6, 1995, 136. Recent articles on Monsanto include: “American Home, Monsanto Accord Won’t Fill a Void,”
WSJ
, June 4, 1998, B10; “Monsanto Tackles a Sceptical Public,”
Marketing Week
, Sept. 4, 1997, 19–20.

26.
It had the further outcome of inspiring the reinvention of that university in a way that suited the cost-effective passions of Monsanto. In the late 1990s, Richard Mahoney, former CEO of the firm, chaired the Finance Committee of the Board of Trustees of the Washington University School of Medicine. Under his leadership, the medical school slashed administrative expenses by many millions of dollars; it did this, in Mahoney’s words, by “consolidating units” and by contracting “with outside companies to handle such things as purchasing, payroll, billing, and collection.” “We are now making comparable changes in several of the academic departments,” Mahoney wrote in a 1997 article for the
Chronicle of Higher Education
in which he also urged other universities to follow the Wash. U. model. “Hire outside contractors,” he advised, not just in restaurants or bookstores (schools were already doing that) but in “any activity that is not at the heart of an institution’s mission.” Why not “buy out or phase out unproductive faculty members?” “Just think about the cost of 10 or 15 years of salary and support services for unproductive people.” “Although a university is not a corporation,” Mahoney also said, “I firmly believe that academic institutions can derive enormous benefit by applying lessons from the experience of Monsanto and other companies that have ‘reinvented’ themselves during the past decade” (Richard J. Mahoney, “ ‘Reinventing’ the University:
Object Lessons from Big Business,”
Chronicle of Higher Education
, October 17, 1997, B4–5).

27.
Chronicle of Higher Education
, December 19, 1997, A38; and Theodore Mitchell, “Border Crossings,”
Daedalus
(fall 1997), 283–84. On Stanford’s early history, see Luger and Goldstein,
Technology in the Garden
, pp. 122–53; Kerr,
The Uses of the University
, p. 89; and James Alley, “The Heart of Silicon Valley,”
Fortune
, July 7, 1997, 66–74. For other university-business partnerships, see Bowie,
The University-Business Partnerships
, pp. 23–31, 107–42; Edwin Artzt, “Developing the Next Generation of Quality Leaders,”
Quality Program
, October 1992, 25–27; and
Chronicle of Higher Education
, November 3, 1993, A27.

28.
“How Stanford and Yamaha Cut an Unusual Technology Deal,”
Chronicle of Higher Education
, August 7, 1998, pp. A36–38.

29.
Stewart Brand,
The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT
(New York: Viking, 1987), p. 6.

30.
See Charle M. Vest, “Research Universities: Overextended, Underfocused, Overstressed, Underfunded,” in Ronald G. Ehrenberg, ed.,
The American University: National Treasure or Endangered Species?
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), pp. 43, 46, 55. Just as Vest was making his charge about the decline in the “national will to excel,” Peter V. Domenici, senator from New Mexico and expert on the budget, urged, in an editorial letter to
Science
, that “scientists” should “take note that total federal R&D spending increased by 1% (from $71.0 to $71.7 billion).” “Congress wrote these increases into law,” he reported “while decreasing overall discretionary spending by 2.4%. Contrary to claims that Congress is threatening to turn the clock backward with the largest cuts in 15 years, Congress sets a high priority on science and backs it up with research dollars” (September 6, 1996, 1319). A month later,
Science
itself conceded that “the drastic cuts in federal R&D … failed to materialize” (October 18, 1996, 332). In May of 1997, moreover, the House of Representatives voted to increase 1998 spending for the National Science Foundation by 7.2 percent over what it spent the previous year (
Chronicle of Higher Education
, May 2, 1997, A38).

Finally, in 1998, the Clinton administration requested in its 1999 federal budget that Congress invest $14.47 billion in
academic
research and development, an increase of $838 million, or nearly 6 percent. The congressional leadership—above all, Newt Gingrich—backed this up. On the increase, see
Chronicle of Higher Education
, February 13, 1998, A38. See also, “New Budget Provides Life for Science,”
Science News
, February 7, 1998, 87. (“Presidential adviser John H. Gibbons,”
Science News
reported, “notes that the 1999 budget emphasizes the research component of R&D—welcome news to universities whose faculty pursue fundamental questions in science. Indeed, funding for basic research, both civilian and military, would increase 5.5 percent after inflation.”)

31.
Quoted in Mark Slouka,
War of the Worlds: Cyberspace and the High-Tech Assault on Reality
(New York: Basic Books, 1995), pp. 68–69.

32.
Quoted in “MIT Media Lab Plans New Effort for Children,”
Chronicle of Higher Education
, October 31, 1997, A39.

33.
Michael Dertouzos,
What Will Be
(New York: Harper Edge, 1997), pp. 239–41, 282–83.

34.
Paul Gray, quoted in Bowie,
The University-Business Partnerships
, pp. 122–23.

35.
Bowie,
The University-Business Partnerships
, p. 132; and Brand,
The Media Lab
, p. 167.

36.
Quoted in
Chronicle of Higher Education
, October 9, 1998, A56.

37.
Rhoads Murphy, professor of history at the University of Michigan, in response to a 1995 curriculum retrenchment at U. of M. (in particular, the elimination of the geography department), in Selvin, “The Future University: Leaner and Meaner?” 135. For accounts of the growing relationship between business and the academy in its many incarnations, see “Louisiana Plans to Meld 50 Campuses into a Coherent 2-Year College System” (… “with business leaders given extraordinary influence to guide the effort”)
Chronicle of Higher Education
, May 1, 1998, A40; “Increase in Number of Chairs Endowed by Corporations Prompts New Concerns,” May 1, 1998, A51, A53; “Pacts Between Universities and Companies Worry Federal Officials,” May 15, 1998; “Conflict-of-Interest Fears Rise as Universities Chase Industry Support,” May 22, 1998, A41.

38. “Freshman Class Adds a New Meaning to the Term ‘Diversity,’ ”
NYU Today
, January 20, 1992, 1.

39.
Asian representation in freshman classes after 1995 was especially very high, although their number in the overall population was small (3 percent)—35 to 40 percent at Berkeley, nearly 50 percent at UCLA, 60 percent at Irvine, 20 percent at Harvard, 27 percent at Stanford, 25 percent at Columbia. See Chan-Liu Tien, “The Role of Asian Americans in Higher Education,” speech delivered at City University of New York, May 5, 1995, excerpted in
Migration World
23 (1995) 4: 14, 23–25;
Chronicle of Higher Education
, March 17, 1995, A26, December 14, 1994, A33;
Rochester Review
, Spring–Summer 1993, 9.

40.
NYT
, July 22, 1996, D7. On the assumed economic rewards of going to the best schools, see Gene Katz, “Sheepskins to Show Off,”
Business Week
, April 25, 1996. On immigrant characteristics generally, see David S. North,
Soothing the Establishment: The Impact of Foreign-Born Scientists and Engineers on America
(New York: University Press of America, 1995).

41.
Quoted in Matthews,
Bright College Years
, p. 33.

42.
Officials quoted in
Chronicle of Higher Education
, October 9, 1998, A45; Richard Krasno (president of the Institute for International Education), quoted in
Chronicle of Higher Education
, December 6, 1996, A64; and Todd Davis (director of research for same institution and associate professor of “higher-education administration” [sic] at the University of North Texas), quoted in
Chronicle of Higher Education
, November 23, 1994, A38.

43.
On declining enrollments, see David Riesman,
On Higher Education: The Academic Enterprise in an Era of Student Consumerism
(San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1980); Geiger,
Research and Relevant Knowledge
, pp. 309–11; and
NYT
, January 4, 1995, A17.

44.
Chronicle of Higher Education
, July 7, 1995, A41.

45.
On recruitment, see
Chronicle of Higher Education
, September 25, 1998, A55; also
Open Doors, 1994–95: Report on International Educational Exchange
(New York: Institute of International Education, 1995), p. viii; and
Chronicle of Higher Education
, November 23, 1994, A38–39; and
ibid.
, Almanac Issue, August 28, 1998, 24.

46.
At Harvard, in 1996, more than 400 foreign students got aid; see
Chronicle of Higher Education
, June 13, 1997, A37. This article also mentions that Yale, Stanford, and Williams College, among others, did not give financial aid to foreigners. Nevertheless, the article also makes clear
how many institutions
offered such aid, not merely Harvard and MIT, but also many less prestigious colleges and universities.

47.
North,
Soothing the Establishment
, pp. 12–14. On educated (East) Indians, Joel Kotkin
(Tribes
[New York: Random House, 1992]) has written that many left India because, among other things, they loathed the increasing Indian reliance on “special preferences for lower castes” as a means of righting historic wrongs (p. 106).

48.
On growth overall, see
Chronicle of Higher Education
, November 21, 1997, A10–11; and December 12, 1997, A42.

49.
For foreign nationals in the life sciences, see National Research Council,
Trends in th Early Careers of Life Scientists
(Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1998), pp. 21–23, 31.

50.
“There can be no argument,” North has written in
Soothing the Establishment
, “that the foreign-born graduate students of science and engineering secure their graduate education largely at American expense” (p. 84). According to the testimony of Joel Snyder (professor at Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, New York, and a licensed professional engineer) before the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform in 1995, both the foreigners and the universities benefited from this situation. The students got “a free tuition [between $7,500 and $12,000 yearly], which is something they could not normally afford.” For its part, the university got “low-cost labor and an actual cash outlay that is nominal and an in-house book transfer, if you will, of the tuition, which is fairly substantial. So from the university standpoint, to have students willing to live at substandard conditions for free tuition is a tremendous boon because it gives them people to teach courses, to work with students at the lower levels, to teach laboratories and so forth.” See “Report of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform,” vol. II, transcript, 120.

51.
Foreign students, fully aware of Uncle Sam’s generosity, “go where they can get the most assistance,” observed Hyaeweol Choi, in her study of Asian scholars,
An International Scientific Community: Asian Scholars in the United States
(Westport, Conn.:
Praeger, 1995). “From the early 1970s,” an Indian-born scientist told Choi, “the U.S. opened up its doors to foreign students … [and for most Indian students] economic reasons” were the “particular reasons” for coming; “80.2 percent of all Indian students study abroad in the U.S.” “In England,” another Indian-born scientist explained to Choi, “they provided financial aid only to British citizens. I thought the United States was the most easily accessible country in getting a student visa and getting financial assistance.” A Taiwanese-born full professor of science effused to Choi that “even when I was graduate student, my fellowship was so good” that “I saved money and sent some to my family in Taiwan” (pp. 16–43).

52.
Chronicle of Higher Education
, December 11, 1998, A18. Choi,
An International Scientific Community
, p. 131; David North,
Soothing the Establishment
, p. 70.

53.
On the Association of American Universities, see Steven Muller (former president of Johns Hopkins University), “Presidential Leadership,” in Cole,
The Research University in a Time of Discontent
, pp. 115–30. “The Association of American Universities,” Muller said, “brings the presidents of major research universities together twice a year, and has been transformed from an organization whose primary activity consisted of free-wheeling discussion of common problems into a tightly organized, well-staffed, and relentlessly active lobbying organization.”