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 to advance research programs in oncology and central nervous system disorders. Merck's decision to open a research facility just down the road from Harvard in 2004 put researchers at both institutions in walking distance of each other.

For Merck, the deal gives the company an early look at new discoveries and the right to negotiate licensing deals for technology that emerges from the collaboration before anyone else. For Harvard, the agreement provides not only funding, but a chance for researchers concerned about seeing their work commercialized an opportunity to interact with a major drug company. It also provides an avenue to advance their projects at a time when capital for early-stage development to carry potential products to a point they can garner private investment is hard to come by.

But for critics of the fading lines between academia and industry, it is another sign of a troubling trend that they say is changing academic research for the worse.

"The question is, do we want our universities to focus on short-term, commercially viable research, or do we want them to continue doing research that is on the frontier that is going to lead to the next generation of technological breakthroughs?" said Jennifer Washburn, a fellow with the New America Foundation and author of University, Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education (Basic Books, 2005). ...

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