Takeover of United States right on schedule

[DharmaDog]

Dakota wrote:
The university can simply refuse their money. Endowed positions always come with strings and the donor certainly has the right to decide how his money is going to be spent.

While true, you must consider the current funding environment we are in. Universities simply are not going to turn down money.

Federal and state grants are hard to come by and shrinking in total amount. Professors are spending 70+% of their time writing more and more grants for smaller and smaller amounts, leaving only about 30% of their time for actual research or teaching duties.

Most universities have somewhat of a double standard regarding funding. They will gladly accept industry or an individual's funds to build a new building (which gets left empty because the funds usually cannot be used to hire anyone), but somehow industry grants don't usually count towards tenure for professors. They are considered tainted money. Not as good as federal or state dollars.

I do understand it is a slippery slope. Industry doesn't typically offload core research to universities, only testing type work, which isn't going to lead to any real innovation for the university lab doing the work. But for professors, the choice is to either keep their labs operational with "tainted" industry money or scale back and hope to win the federal grant lottery, which is highly political in nature.

I guess my point is that both at the university level and at the individual professor level, no one is turning down industry dollars because that's largely all that is available.

[Grace62]

The dean claims the decision was not made based on the school's financial situation, but because they wanted to "boost" the econ dept.

I agree with the university financing experts interviewed for the story, this level of control is "unheard of" and "shocking."

It's one thing to give a big donation to boost a particular department, but something else entirely to demand that you be allowed to choose the profs. That should be done by the institution's staff, period. That's what they are paid for.

I'm with Dak and cbelt - the school should have and could have refused the money.
There is plenty of precedent for refusing gifts with inappropriate strings attached.

Side note - I took a fair number of econ courses in college, the profs were careful not to bring their personal political views into the lectures and taught us to look critically at all sides. I remember these profs well but couldn't tell you how they voted.
That's how it should be done, imo.

(nothing wrong with profs stating views if they want to, free speech and all...)

[rankandfile]

Higher education, especially public ones, have been under great financial stress for decades now. Like the economy, it's gotten progressively more difficult. Balancing need versus principle is an ongoing concern.

Academic freedom has been compromised. The resulting fruit will be tainted, just as it is at heavily-influenced and financed Koch "think tanks" that have been inserted into supposedly academic institutions around the country.

That being said, I find it amusing in a macabre way that the Kochs are adamantly against regulation in business, but they want to tightly regulate a "donation" to an academic institution. In other words, the unregulated free market is for everybody but the Kochs.

I also wonder if we, the taxpayers, will have to foot the bill for a tax write-off in this transaction. It clearly is not "at arms length".

[Ted King]

rankandfile wrote:

I also wonder if we, the taxpayers, will have to foot the bill for a tax write-off in this transaction. It clearly is not "at arms length".

Additionally, who is paying for the infrastructure that the hired professors need? The taxpayers of Florida do because this is a public university. Essentially, the Koch brothers are able to use public money to leverage say so over who teaches what at a public university.

[Grace62]

Look at who Florida has for a governor now, King of Tea and corrupt businessman Rick Scott. I'm sure he's thrilled about having the Koch brothers fund one of the state's public universities, lord knows he doesn't want to.

[Mac1337]

OK, somebody shows up at a university and says I have a million bucks to give but I want it used this way. What is the problem?

[the_poochies]

RgrF wrote:
It is after all Florida State University, this might even enhance it's meager scholastic reputation. Maybe if they invested as much of university assets in academics as they do in athletics, they couldn't be as easily bought off.

When I read this story, my first thought was "Florida State has an Economics Department?"

[kj]

I think Universities have be "whoring it up" for quite some time. In the graduate department I attended, Ely Lily was responsible for the grant that supported much of the research. If you think they tolerated a "free exchange of ideas", you would be wrong. There were certain things they wanted to see come out of the lab, and that's what came out of the lab. I guess it isn't as newsworthy when a pharmaceutical company controls what comes out of a department in a graduate school, but the end result is just as damaging, imo. kj.

[Grace62]

Dakota wrote:
OK, somebody shows up at a university and says I have a million bucks to give but I want it used this way. What is the problem?

Donations should not be used to politically influence teaching at public universities. The schools should be trying to hire the best qualified profs they can find, not the ones that fit a certain ideology. In this case the Kochs themselves interfered with the school's search for qualified candidates. That's highly unethical. Ethical school officials refuse such donations.

There are plenty of private colleges and universities where the stated mission is conservative indoctrination. The Kochs should stick with those.

[rjmacs]

Dakota wrote:
OK, somebody shows up at a university and says I have a million bucks to give but I want it used this way. What is the problem?

I think you make a good point, Dakota. It's really not the Kochs' responsibility to maintain Florida State University's academic independence - that is the university's job.

It's true that it's outside general and accepted practice at institutions of higher learning to accept endowments like this, where the donor has direct influence over hiring decisions. Historically, the reason for this is that universities derive much of their legitimacy from the relative independence of tenured faculty. Traditionally, this independence includes the authority to hire and promote professors without outside influence.

It's not unreasonable to ask whether this system works, or provides a public good. I happen to think that it does, and that universities are better off when they decline gifts with such strings attached. Whether the donor is a Koch or a Soros, giving wealthy contributors undue influence over faculty selection hurts the institution's reputation. And in academia, reputation is literally everything.