Jennifer Washburn

Merck and Harvard enter a collaboration that reflects the closer ties being forged between industry and academia, but it's a trend that is alarming to some. ...

At a time when federal research dollars have grown scarcer, universities are embracing industry partners interested in getting a first crack at their cutting-edge technologies.

The latest evidence of this comes from a recently announced agreement between Harvard Medical School and the pharmaceutical giant Merck. Merck and Harvard Medical School will collaborate… more

In recent years there have been a number of highly visible attacks on American science, everything from the fundamentalist assault on evolution to the Bush administration’s strong-arming of government scientists. But for many people who pay close attention to research and development (R&D), the biggest threat to science has been quietly occurring under the radar, even though it may be changing the very foundation of American innovation. The threat is money -- specifically, the decline of government support for science… more

Five hundred million dollars is a lot of money -- especially for a public university. When the giant oil company BP announced Feb. 1 that it had chosen the University of California, Berkeley, to lead the largest academic-industry research consortium in U.S. history, University of California officials appeared giddy.

If the deal is approved, BP, formerly known as British Petroleum, will give $500 million over 10 years to create a multidisciplinary Energy Biosciences Institute at UC Berkeley. Berkeley would partner with… more

The alliance between the oil giant BP and the University of California, Berkeley, stands out because of its $500 million price tag, its commercial scope and the potential for BP to exert excessive influence over the academic research. But it isn’t an isolated case.

The second largest such partnership is a 10-year, $225-million deal Stanford University signed with Exxon Mobil and other energy firms in 2002 to fund a Global Climate and Energy Project.

The Stanford deal was controversial from the… more

On Feb. 1, the oil giant BP announced that it had chosen UC Berkeley, in partnership with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, to lead the largest academic-industrial research alliance in U.S. history. If the deal is approved, BP will give $500 million over 10 years to fund a new multidisciplinary Energy Biosciences Institute devoted principally to biofuels research.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, UC administrators and BP executives immediately proclaimed the alliance -- which is… more

Westchester - WABC, October 26, 2006) -- A new trend in being seen in higher education: Big business spending big bucks to influence what's taught in college classes. Eyewitness News education reporter Art McFarland has the story.

Matt Ganis is teaching computer programming at Pace University in Pleasantville. But he's not paid by the university. He's an IBM employee, brought in to give this lecture as part of a worldwide, $100 million IBM program to shape college curricula in information technology...

IBM… more

An important education bill -- sponsored by state Sen. Martha Escutia (D-Whittier) and supported by prominent education groups -- is sitting on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s desk awaiting his signature. The bill would allow publishers to develop textbooks for the state that would be designed to foster the language skills of non-native English speakers.

Virtually everyone agrees that these English language learners, who make up about 25% of the state’s student population, need more help mastering English. According to a 2006 state-commissioned… more

RALEIGH, N.C. -- When graduate students at North Carolina State University took their seats on the first day of a class called Services Management, the kickoff lecture wasn't delivered by a professor. Instead, it was given by a manager from International Business Machines Corp.

The company, in fact, helped develop the curriculum and awarded grants to the school with the expectation that the course would be taught -- all with the aim of producing graduates better prepared to work for… more

Most of us place enormous faith in our universities. We trust that they are autonomous, independent institutions committed to education, scholarship, academic freedom and the production of knowledge free from the influence of special interest groups. Right?

Wrong. In the last 25 years, the United States has given birth to a market-model university, one where professors increasingly work "for hire." Just last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that a major academic study -- which found that antidepressants were safe… more

The recent court ruling clearing the way for students who flunked California's high school exit exam to receive their diplomas anyway was frustrating to anyone who wants the state to reclaim its former glory as home to the nation's greatest public education system. The fact that 47,000 students lack a rudimentary proficiency in either eighth-grade math or 10th-grade English is appalling. More appalling is that the exam doesn't test 12th-grade proficiency.

The unpleasant truth is that decades of severe financial… more