Thursday, December 3. 1998
The University Daily Kansan
Section A·Page 7
Corporations invest in college campuses
Continued from page 1A
the Crumbling Classrooms Initiative
If the state economy maintains its current growth, Ballard predicted a legislative debate between fiscal responsibility and the demands of the University to maintain a high level of quality.
"You present your case the best way you can," Ballard said. "You show the money is a good investment for higher education and the state."
That said, she is not very optimistic that large budget increases will be approved.
So where does the University go?
Across the country, institutions have increasingly turned to private industry.
Businesses not only are sponsoring more academic research than ever before; they are spreading their money and name around college campuses.
Richard Konzem, associate athletic director, said a marketing firm contacted the athletic department in recent years about the possibility of attracting a sponsor. The University told the firm it was not interested in a sponsorship deal for renaming the field house.
enough to try that," Corman said. "There'd be a hell of a knock-down, drag-out over that."
However, the soccer field on campus was named for SuperTarget, and the Regents just approved the naming of a new gymnasium after a private benefactor.
Exclusive beverage contracts are no longer considered unusual. In a deal similar to the ones found at restaurants in which only one company's beverages are sold, the University of Kansas signed a deal with Coca-Cola that could pump as much as $21 million into the University's budget during a 10-year period.
All building names must be approved by the Regents, and Barb Conant, director of communications for the board, said there
Crossing into academia
Big corporate donors are not exactly new in the realm of college sports. The academic arena of higher education is at the heart of the privatization debate.
Extending the tradition of naming buildings after individual donors, some universities have changed the names of their sports arenas and activity centers to corporate names in exchange for cash. The academic world has begun to mirror the business world with its stadiums such as
is no standard policy for or against the naming of buildings after corporations.
Ballard said acquiring outside funding could be the difference between being a good university and an excellent university in the future. Some do not welcome this reality.
David Katzman, chairman of American studies, criticized commercialization in a controversial speech at the University Forum in September.
"Money changes the structure of the University," Katzman said.
While Katzman cited examples of suspicious corporate research partnerships at universities in other parts of the country, Bob Zerwek, associate vice chancellor of research, said the system here works just fine.
Katzman said the trend could taint the neutrality of research and the credibility of professors. He also said commercialization changed the open tradition of the academic environment.
Katzman said no other work he had done at the University generated as much interest as that speech.
"Businesses look for areas of mutual interest with the University." Zerwekh
the TWA Dome in St. Louis and Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego.
At Arizona State University, for instance, the basketball arena will be named Wells Fargo Arena after the banking corporation donated $5 million to the school.
And college students now enjoy football bowl games with names like the Intel.com Bowl and the Nokia Sugar Bowl.
Testing the limits
Most bristle at the thought of changing the name of Allen Field House. University of Kansas Athletic Corporation officials say no such deal currently is under consideration.
There probably are limits to how far the University will go for private money.
Warren Corman, University architect and former Board of Regents facilities director, said the century-old Kansas basketball tradition is too great to change the name.
"I can't imagine anybody would be stupid
- In addition to state financing of more than $1.2 billion annually, Kansas public universities have other income streams.
AN APPETITE FOR MONEY
The University of Kansas gets additional state and private funding for capital improvements. Corporations also provide millions in business deals.
- Some faculty and students object to the corporate business deals, but others think they are just a way of life. In a letter to the editor of the University Daily Kansan, Chris Pettigrew, Shawne junior, said the University community needed to just accept the private-public partnerships.
said.
"Get over the obsession with Coke and move on to issues that can make our lives much better," Pettigrew said.
He said businesses do not set research pri-
orties, Rather, the University attracts corporate research grants that are compatible with its
researchers' knowledge and experience.
If the University does not offer a specific specialty or line of research, another university probably
does, and the research would go there, he said. "We want to increase our private support, but government spending will always be dominant," Zerwek said. Today, corporate money, in conjunction with private foundation funds, pays for about 25 percent of the University
In private research, corporations such as Sprint solicit academic researchers to conduct research on the company's behalf. The process often is competitive, with researchers from many universities vying for the research grant. Zerwekh said the private research money is quite beneficial to the University.
"It furthersthe research enterprise and provides funding and opportunities for more graduate work," he said.
Universities in the next millennium
Around the University, most everyone would agree with Zerwekh's contention that private funding should be a supplement
and not a replacement for public funding.
"How much can the state withdraw and the university still function at the same capacity?" Harrington asked.
For now, it is a rhetorical question. But he pointed to examples of other universities in California and Florida where the issue of finding money to supplement state support has overturned the old, narrow view of education funding.
In Florida, some state universities are being asked to specialize in research, while others are concentrating on things such as undergraduate education. Funding is distributed with a strong emphasis on obtaining corporate money to develop a research corridor.
In the California State University system, a $3 billion, 23-campus publicprivate technology partnership recently fell through after complaints from students, faculty and businesses not included in the deal. But the idea is not dead, and administrators currently are working on a new, but similar, partnership.
It is only a matter of time before a more intense struggle over private funding takes place in Kansas, where tuition costs are among the lowest in the nation, Harrington predicted.
"I don't know what can be done. I
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